Idealistic recycling effort saves CSN cold, hard cash

This is one of those stories about unintended consequences.

It is about what can happen when the people at a huge government institution start a program with sincerely good intentions and then, out of nowhere, someone tosses out a figure like $78,000 when no one was talking about that kind of money.

Suddenly, everyone is shocked.

"That's a lot of money," said David Waterhouse, who is largely responsible for it all.

Back in the 2007-08 school year, the student government at the College of Southern Nevada set some goals for the year. One of those goals was to introduce a campus recycling program.

A similar program at UNLV had been wildly successful, and CSN's students wanted to emulate it. They wanted to do some good, save the planet and all that.

CSN is huge, with three campuses across the valley and well over 40,000 students taking classes every semester. The students and faculty go through reams of paper and plastic bottles .

The recycling program did not get under way during that first year, but the foundation was laid.

Waterhouse took over as student government president for the 2008-09 school year. He made implementing the recycling program one of his priorities.

He had volunteered at a neighborhood recycling facility as a kid, and besides, Waterhouse wouldn't disagree if you called him a typical liberal-leaning college student.

The students had allocated $25,000 of student government funds for recycling bins and labels for them to be spread around the college's Cheyenne campus. That's where the program was first implemented about a year ago. Only $5,000 has been spent.

Students negotiated a deal with a recycling company that would cost neither the school nor the student government any money. The company would haul away the recyclable materials at no cost. Any profit would be theirs.

Soon, students and staffers began to use the recycling bins for paper, plastic, cardboard and aluminum.

This is where the unintended consequences come in.

With all that recycling going on, there was less of a need for regular trash bins.

K.C. Brekken, a school spokeswoman, said the campus ended up eliminating about one-third of the trash receptacles on the Cheyenne campus.

That led to less trash, which meant that not as much needed to be hauled away come trash day.

That meant the trash bill shrunk. A lot.

Brekken said the school estimates the recycling program on the Cheyenne campus alone will save the school $28,000 a year.

Once it gets started at its satellite centers and on the other two campuses -- West Charleston and Henderson should start in a couple of weeks -- the total savings should be about $78,000 a year.

That's not a ton of money for a school whose annual budget tops $100 million. But it would hire another professor. Or fund a couple of scholarships. Or keep the library open a little later.

And it's all bonus money. Nobody expected the savings. The whole project wasn't done with saving money in mind.

That was, said Waterhouse, totally, completely unintended.

Contact reporter Richard Lake at rlake@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0307.