Making Recycling a Habit on Campus

Lately a mysterious blue box has started to show up on many college campuses. This blue box resembles an oversized vending machine. But these mysterious boxes can help college students recycle in a way that is fun, easy and even profitable to the students.

The concept is a smart one. The students just bring their plastic recycling to one of the blue boxes. They are generally located in dorm lobbies or in college gymnasiums where a large amount of student traffic flows.

The machine uses a touch screen to interact with the student to help him or her set up an account. Then each time the student puts some recycling into the machine, it gives them credits. When the student accumulates enough credits, the recycling device lets them print out coupons for local restaurants or other retail locations in town.

Students are often very mindful of environmental issues. But they need a convenient way like this to make recycling part of their daily lives.

Students also throw away a lot of plastic bottles used for soda pop or bottled water. These machines capture that recycling thus keeping it out of the land fills.

The machines also help local merchants to become part of campus recycling programs. By providing coupons to the recycling program, they see more customers come to their stores from the lucrative college crowd. That is a great way for a business to be a environmentally friendly business and to do some very effective marketing at very little cost or effort of their own.

For the students, these campus recycling machines are a hit. It is fun to bring plastic bottles to the machine to deposit them for credits.

The level of plastic recycling has skyrocketed on campuses where this recycling plan is in use. And when college kids learn how to be in the recycling habit at this stage of life, there is a good chance they will be people who recycle as adults. That is a very good learning situation for everyone.