AJ Circhirillo / Roundup
His body is half engulfed by the large dumpster. His hands grab for sticky bottles and cans, working his way past the discarded mess. Digging through the trash is a day-by-day cycle for him; cans and bottles are how he survives.
“I’m retired, I’m an old man,” said Gilbert Esqueda, a non-student that comes to campus for recyclables. “I get money from social security, but it’s hardly enough to pay my bills.”
Esqueda is just one of the many non-students who are attracted to the campus to collect recyclable goods that are generally thrown into the trash.
According to Pierce’s facility offcials, the majority of the recycling bins on campus have no official program that ensures their proper disposal, due to the lack of personnel and the mere fact that recycling costs more than it generates,
“We have over 700,000 square feet of responsibility and only 24 custodians,” said Paul Nieman, director of plant facilities at Pierce College. “The bottom line is, we aren’t against recycling at all. The best solution is putting everything into a large bin and send it off to a company that source separates.”
The term “source separate” refers to an individual digging through trash for recycled goods and separating them.
The custodial staff, led by Nieman, the Environmental Committee, and the non-students who collect trash on campus, take responsibility for the recycling.
Esqueda, 66, suffers from heart complications. He complains that his arteries are clogged and will need to get a bypass soon.
He has Medicare, but it isn’t nearly enough to fund the inevitable surgery that he will need.
“I just get six, seven, sometimes 12 dollars a day,” said Esqueda. “It helps me to buy food. “It’s hard living right now, by the 20th of the month I run out of money.”
The newly selected Associated Students Organization president, Nick Naczinski, is also the president of the Environmental Committee at Pierce. Naczinski hopes to use ASO funds to create a job where a student will get paid to collect and recycle around campus.
“I know people need jobs,” said Naczinski. It’s a job that needs to be done.”
Seven recycling bins were purchased with ASO funds. They are blue and have three compartments that separate bottles, cans and paper.
The Environmental Committee has had trouble recycling because someone cut the locks that had secured recyclables in their proper bins.
According to Nieman, “funding a recycling program is a district-wide issue.”
Pierce College is one of many schools that has to choose a clean campus over proper recycling procedures.
Nieman and his Operations Manager, Randy Brooks, said that there is a recycling program in which the paper and cardboard used by the cafeteria and bookstore are collected and recycled on a regular basis. A company called International Paper comes on campus and collects these giant bins, called “gondolas.”
The recycling bins that the custodians are responsible for can be found all around Pierce. The custodians also take responsibility for the solar powered bins in front of the Freudian Sip.
The custodial staff doesn’t spend all of their time separating recyclables from trash. However, according to Brooks, if the recycling bin is filled mostly with clean recyclables, they will put it aside and give it to the Environmental Committee.
Recyclables that are contaminated cannot be saved and are simply thrown in the trash.
“We would not give source separation precedence over a clean campus,” said Nieman.
Nieman calls the non-students who dig through the trash Pierce’s unofficial recycling program.
“We can’t control the outside people,” said Brooks. “They collect for money and this is an open campus.”
Outside trash collecting happens so often, that most times when the custodians come to take the trash, the recyclables in the majority of those containers are gone.
“They have been contacted by the officers to not go through the recycling bins, but the trash is okay,” said Jennifer Ordonez, a Sheriff cadet at Pierce.
Both Brooks and Nieman have said that these collectors are generally peaceful people who just want the cans and bottles. However, both Brooks and Naczinski think that they are responsible for cutting off the locks to the ASO recycling bins. Brooks’ custodians have told him that these “outside people” have gone into classrooms to collect.
The sheriffs believe otherwise.
“I respect everybody, I don’t want them to get angry and not let me come here anymore,” said Esqueda.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, from 1960 to 2008 the amount of waste each person creates has almost doubled from 2.7 to 4.5 pounds per day.
“A lot of people talk green, but when it comes down to it, they don’t want to put the effort into doing it,” said Nieman.
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Gilbert Esqueda, 66, digs through piles of trash to find recyclable goods. Esqueda is one of many outside individuals who come to the Pierce campus to collect recyclables for money. (AJ Cichirillo / Roundup)
Brent Molina, 21, a psychology major at Pierce, recycles a plastic bottle outside the Freudian Sip on Monday. (Elliot Golan / Roundup)
