By: Annie Lalonde
The City of Oxford uses Rumpke as its source for disposing trash and outsourcing recycling. Recyclables can range from normal household goods to Christmas trees and leaf pickups. If you are looking for drop-off options, you should check behind Miami University Police Station or even behind Oxford’s TJ Maxx. Between the storage materials used at move-in to all the packages received by the end of a semester, it’s important that you know where your disposed items are going.
In 2019, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) greenlighted landfill expansion in Colerain Township of Ohio. Colerain Township is less than 30 minutes from Butler County, the county where Miami resides. Under this granted permit, Rumpke will be able to expand its landfill by 240 acres, which is estimated to provide Rumpke with 30 more years of storage. Rumpke estimates that it can go another four years before expanding; once this expansion comes, it will greatly affect the people of Colerain Township and Butler County. Common detriments of living in close proximity to a landfill include the smells for current, nearby residents and decreased property values.
To reduce Miami’s input on this new expansion, we are expected to know how we can recycle our disposed items. According to a Rumpke representative, in 2019 there was an estimated 927 tonnes recycled. Oxford’s recycling is truly useful for Rumpke, which has markets for all our recycled goods and sells 98 percent of these materials domestically.
Therefore, it is important to encourage Oxford residents to continue their recycling habits and to stay informed on what goods are recyclable. Students living in dorms often recycle the wrong items, and students uptown in Oxford do not always know where to leave their items once recycled. This means a lot of our efforts to recycle might end up back as trash anyway. Here are some guidelines to help with common misconceptions in recycling:
Recyclable:
- Plastic bottles, jugs, cardboard, aluminum, and steel cans
- Boxes (break down/flatten large boxes), pizza boxes (without food residue)
- Paper towel and toilet paper cores
- Frozen meal boxes
- Cereal boxes (the inner liner is trash)
- Cartons—milk, juice, soup, broth, wine (remove plastic caps), juice boxes are acceptable, throw away the straw
Not recyclable:
- Grocery bags, solo cups, styrofoam, and scrap metal
- Trash bags cannot be recycled (keep your recycled items loose in the bins)
- Napkins, paper towels or tissues
- Paper coffee, tea or cold drink cups
- Paper plates
- Straws
- Light bulbs
For further guidance on any questions students might have about what they can recycle, see here for Miami’s updated guidelines in accordance with Rumpke from May 2019.
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