WFF Facility Services and its recycling efforts at Loyola University may have taken several steps back, according to reports made by students last semester.

Several incidents were accounted for during the first two weeks of November by students claiming to have seen WFF facility workers taking recyclable bins and bags containing paper, plastic and aluminum, and throwing them away in the trash cans instead of in the blue recycling dumpster on West Road.

There were four reports in total, three pertaining to WFF maintenance workers, and the other concerning Sodexo, which manages Loyola’s dining services and remains a separate entity from Loyola.

Ann Moss, director of facilities operations, said she believes some reports were mainly misunderstandings.

“While it appeared that items would be thrown in the garbage dumpster, in reality some bags were staged near the garbage dumpster and picked up later by the driver to deliver to the recycling dumpster,” she said.

Steven Lacroix, WFF supervisor, was contacted through emails several times and did not respond.

The sustainability committee met with Edward Kvet, provost and vice president of Academic Affairs, on Nov. 18 to discuss the recycling program.

Kathy Anzelmo, biology professor and a member of the sustainability committee, attended the meeting and said she was worried when she got the reports.

“They were enough to say, ‘OK, let’s talk about this in the meeting because something may be going on,'” she said. “I don’t want to think that it was a lot or that it is something that may have happened on other occasions.”

Anzelmo said that the WFF supervisor, Lacroix, explained to the committee that some workers take the recyclables on the Broadway campus and put them into a different pile near the dumpster, which is partially obstructed from view due to the presence of a fence.

“This may have caused some students to think they were throwing the recyclables away, when they were really putting them into a different pile to be picked up by the truck that takes them to the dumpster,” Anzelmo said. “We only know of two reports that were definitely true, which is not so bad.”

Some students are not as concerned as their peers who reported the incidents.

“I think recycling doesn’t help as much as people say,” said Aurora Brennes, mass communication freshman. “It’s obviously wrong if the maintenance workers did that because those bins are there for a reason. However, I don’t believe it’s a big deal.”

Currently, Loyola has one recycling dumpster located on West Road. The workers at the Broadway campus have to transport the recyclables to the main campus once a week to discard them properly.

From now on, there will be one WFF worker responsible for just the recycling. According to Anzelmo, Ann Moss and Steve Lacroix responded very quickly and came up with this solution. She said that it will help clear up any confusion that may arise from having two workers concentrating on different areas.

“Now there are no questions about what he’s supposed to be doing,” she said. “The committee was happy and appreciative of the quick solution. I only ask that if anyone witnesses anything, please send an email to [email protected] and report it, or even better, take photos.”

Having been involved with the recycling program since Hurricane Katrina, Anzelmo believes to be aware of what the university needs in order for it to improve in its sustainability.

“The program started with the recycling of paper, and now we also are able to recycle many other things, such as plastic, aluminum, tin and steel cans, ink cartridges and plastic bottles, among others,” Anzelmo said. “We’re trying to get people away from those (plastic bottles) because of their negative environmental impact.”

Moss said very few incidents have happened in which recyclables are placed in trashcans, and that these have happened when the recycling dumpster was already full.

“We have no storage space to hold materials, so to prevent bags from becoming unsightly and a health/safety issue, they were discarded,” Moss said. “WFF has done a good job of handling our recycling program, and we’re making every effort to prevent this from happening and will continue to do so.”

Judith Corro can be reached at [email protected]