By Beth Heinen

Assistant News Editor

For at least three years, cleaning and trash crews have simply left all recyclable materials where they were, having never been instructed what to do with them.

``I don't know where any paper or cans go,'' said student Sarah Kramer, who has worked maintenance in various capacities for more than the 3 years in the FAC and Commons area. ``I've never been trained, and none of the other students have either.''

``We just piled up the recycling stuff and left it for whoever was supposed to pick it up,'' agreed another student worker from the Commons. ``At first [my supervisor] didn't even instruct me to separate it from the trash; I had to ask him. I don't know if he just expected me to or anything.''

These workers were unaware of who picked up the recycling materials, much less what they did with it or where it was brought. However, student Cecily Squier, who primarily works with the trash, knew that ``[recycling] was generally the domain of the day people.''

To make matters worse, said Kramer, sometimes the recycling bins would be overflowing when the students got to them. At that time, since they did not know what else to do, workers would simply dump the recyclables into the trash bags and deposit them into the regular dumpster to eliminate the mess.

``There is a bin for cardboard by the dumpster, so that just makes sense,'' said Squier of trying to recycle the excess materials, ``but there was no instruction for anything else. No one ever knew. It came to a head last week when someone dumped a huge pile of course catalogs in the Commons Lecture Hall with a sign that said, `Please recycle.' I was like, `we can't!'''

Henry Kingma, recycling coordinator at the Physical Plant, was unaware that this was happening. While not personally responsible for the training of student workers, he said of the lack of instruction, ``That is not supposed to happen.''

Kingma mentioned that the maintenance crew had appointed a new supervisor over the summer, and that this person was now in charge of training, but offered no concrete reasons as to why both former and current student workers had not been informed.

However, the problem may have already been solved. On Wednesday, after Chimes had already talked to a number of students and Kingma about the issue, Squier reported that her supervisor had just that day instructed ``those of us who it pertained to'' how to handle the recyclable materials. While the instruction seems somewhat after-the-fact, most student workers think it's something important that they should know.

``Conceivably, you'd want the whole crew to know how to do recycling,'' said Kramer.

Kingma did mention that despite the confusion, a considerable amount of material does in fact get recycled at Calvin. The glass/metal/plastic dumpster, which is approximately 15 cubic yards, fills up about every two weeks, he said. From there, Sunset Waste Company picks it up and takes it to the Kent County Department of Public Works, where it is sorted by jail inmates on work release for the day.