I became interested in the town of Geneseo’s recycling practices after a friend told me her landlord won’t pay for the service. I wanted to learn whether this was a move motivated by genuine fiscal concerns, or if the landlord was simply being lazy. What I found in my research pointed to a larger issue outside of one landlord and exposed disincentives for recycling in the town of Geneseo. I propose the barrier to access such services should be lessened, and measures should be put in place to encourage recycling in Geneseo.
The Geneseo Recycling and Transfer Station is located at 4952 Warner Road and is open two days a week. To use the facility, one must pay the Annual Permit Fee of $25 and buy a punch card for $20. Both sums cannot be paid at the Transfer Station itself and must be brought to the Town Clerk’s Office instead. For local renters in Geneseo, these fees (and the roundabout way through which one can obtain a permit to use the facility) may discourage people from recycling if such services are not already provided by their landlord or property manager.
For Geneseo students living off-campus, lack of access to recycling services is a real problem. Many want to get involved and live sustainably, but the responsibility falls on one’s landlord to provide recycling services in most cases. According to the SUNY Geneseo Off-Campus Sustainability Guide (provided by GEO, our environmental club on campus), Shark Enterprises and Waste Management are the other two waste collection companies in Geneseo that provide recycling services, but many landlords opt to only purchase waste removal services (i.e., trash) for their properties.
With landlords seemingly unwilling to budge on this issue, it appears that the responsibility to encourage recycling should fall on the town of Geneseo and the college. The town should incentivize or at the very least encourage landlords to provide these services, perhaps through lowering costs and providing a recycling pick-up service of their own.
As for the college itself, it is their policy to no longer provide recycling services for students once they move off-campus—it makes sense to prohibit off-campus students from using recycling repositories in the dorms, but what about promoting alternatives? Are we expected to care about recycling when we live on-campus but not when we move off-campus?
The reality of the current state of recycling in Geneseo is that a large portion of recyclable materials are being sent to landfills. This is absolutely preventable, and the residents of Geneseo need to advocate for themselves in hopes of getting the attention of the authorities.
If you want to learn about sustainability at Geneseo, consider attending GEO meetings on Thursdays in Bailey 202, or contact the Office of Sustainability to see how you can get involved. Where money is concerned, it is not easy to get people to change their ways, but student activism has a long history of creating change, so perhaps we can direct that energy toward this important issue.
Hayley Jones is an English major junior who likes to daydream.