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The Dartmouth
July 19, 2025 | Latest Issue
The Dartmouth

Recycling To Riches

Expecting the frats to suddenly start recycling is like my fantasy of running table during Homecoming weekend while beautiful and wealthy female alumnae chant my name and throw their Hanover Inn room keys at me -- both scenarios are possible but highly improbable.

I don't write this to single out or criticize the Greek system, something that has unfairly been done thousands of times and to no avail. Recycling was part of my curriculum in every grade from elementary through high school. I know, like everyone else, what I should do, yet I'm still reluctant to walk across my dorm room to recycle when the trashcan is right next to my desk. Lecture, educate and encourage all you want, but the best way Dartmouth could effect ecological change would be to make recycling profitable.

RecycleBank, a green startup company, rewards participating homes in Massachusetts by giving them points based on the weight of their week's recycling. Homeowners then redeem those points at stores such as CVS for free merchandise. Not surprisingly, recycling rates have soared in those areas. I'm not an economics major, but I'm pretty sure that if the College offered free kegs for pounds of aluminum -- a virtual trash to treasure exchange -- then recycling bins would start to appear.

Best of all, this system doesn't rely on fickle good intentions. It relies on the Greek system's almost endless consumption of and desire for alcohol. It's understandable that protecting Mother Nature falls low on students' priority list. Such apathy is obviously not ideal, but after language drill, a hundred pages of "The Iliad" and a paper on existentialism, it makes sense that we'd rather sink a ping-pong ball in a cup than sink a can into a green bin.

The dozens of environmental groups on campus would love to see the Greek system go green. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the nightly waste of thousands of cans must rank as one of the worst environmental problems on campus. The administration could ally with these groups to collect, weigh and redeem each week's bounty at, for example, Northeast Waste Services, a recycling center a mere eight miles away. After that, the most pressing issue is whether the frats should receive kegs of Keystone or if the College should splurge and get them PBR.

It's true that Dartmouth's alcohol policy may change, allowing an unlimited amount of kegs on campus. This could effectively eliminate cans from the basement. It will not, however, eliminate the plastic cups, which are also recyclable. And, believe it or not, fraternities and sororities are more than their basements. People really do live in them, and those people generate waste. Think of how excited you would be in knowing that the classics reading you're about to finish (and promptly discard)would ultimately result in free beer.

Exchanging empty Keystones for full Keystones is a win-win scenario for the administration, the Greek system and the environment. Making recycling profitable is the ultimate catalyst for change. Perhaps the system could even be extended to the dorms. It seems doubtful that the administration would buy kegs for the Choates cluster, but maybe free Mai Thai is a better and slightly less illegal alternative. And better yet, the benefits don't even have to stop at aluminum cans. For you Colt 45 fans out there, 40s are eligible, too; both aluminum and glass can be recycled an infinite number of times.

One of Al Gore's favorite sayings it that political will is a renewable resource. I'd say, however, that the more salient renewable resource on this campus is Dartmouth's insatiable lust for rage. Just like a bottomless keg, it is never tapped out.