Ohio State students who obtain meals from Buckeye Express and want to reduce waste can now recycle some of the food containers and are encouraged to use the products made with recycled material.

Nearly 8,300 OSU students have meal contracts that enable them to use Buckeye Express. Students paying with cash or Buck ID are also welcome to dine-in or carryout their meals. Buckeye Express is geared towards the carryout option, so food is placed in disposable containers. These containers create large amounts of waste.

“The amount of people in each location varies,” said Tim Keegstra, director of campus dining services. “The Morrill Tower location has a high of 600 students at dinner, while the Baker location could have as many 1,500 to 2,000 students at dinner.”

Each student who visits Buckeye Express is allowed 7 items per meal. Meals are placed in paper and plastic containers. Plastic foam cups are distributed for hot beverages. Students can easily reduce the amount of waste by using the Buckeye Express travel mugs.

“We instituted the mug program so that everyone with a meal contract could pick-up a mug for free,” Keegstra said. “We still don’t get many students bringing their mugs back.”

As an incentive for using the mugs, students are allowed an additional food item.

“I don’t really need the extra item and most of the time I go to Buckeye Express after leaving class, so I don’t ever have my mug,” said Arvind Bharthuar, a freshman in computer science and engineering.

Besides reusing the mugs, students can recycle some of the food containers instead of just throwing them away.

“OSU accepts plastic one and two,” said Anne Dunlope, recycling supervisor at OSU. “This covers plastics such as pop bottles, milk jugs and shampoo bottles.”

The university produces around 24 million pounds of trash each year and is mandated by the Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio to recycle 25 percent. Unfortunately, the Buckeye Express plastic containers are classified as plastic six. Paper food containers are acceptable.

Even though not all Buckeye Express containers can be recycled, the campus dining services uses recycled products.

“The most important decision is to use items that are recycled,” Keegstra said. “One of the biggest problems is not having a market for those items, so we try to use things that have been made from recycled products.”

Students can also recycle many products throughout campus.

“We collect cardboard at the residence halls and in classroom buildings,” Dunlope said. “The residence halls are implementing a recycling program that will collect pizza boxes on each floor.”

Several thousand paper and plastic bins can also be found on campus.

For more information log on to the OSU’s recycling Web site, www.physfac.ohio-state.edu/recycle