The Chronicle

Issue date: 4/3/07 Section: News
Last update: 4/3/07 at 6:17 AM EST

Media Credit: Peter Gebhard The Environmental Alliance is offering prizes throughout April as an incentive to students to recycle.

The next time you throw that empty plastic water bottle in the trash can instead of the recycling bin, beware-you could have just lost yourself free LocoPops, a new bicycle or a host of other prizes.

Duke Environmental Alliance, the student group responsible for the annual Eco-Olympics, has begun a new campaign called "Get Caught Recycling," which will continue to run through April.

Members of EA have been staking out recycling bins on campus and rewarding environmentally conscious students with free gift certificates, entries into grand-prize raffle drawings and praise.

"For most people, waste management-dealing with the material consequences of our consumption-is an invisible process," EA President Vanessa Barnett-Loro, a junior, wrote in an e-mail. "If we don't have to see it, smell it or confront it in any way, then that just means it's working properly. [Members of the recycling campaign] are working creatively to change that misconception."

Soon, pictures of the recycling Dukies will also be displayed each week on "Look who got caught recycling!" fliers in the Bryan Center and the Marketplace, said junior Jamie Gordon, recycling coordinator for the EA.

"The idea is basically to get people to think about what they're doing, how they are disposing of their trash, what they are using and to really realize that they're making a big difference when they are recycling," Gordon said. "It's a fun, high-energy way to get people involved."

It may be fun, but it is also a bit of a shock for those who are "caught in the act," said junior Winston Wilde.

"I was in the Bryan Center typing up a paper on my laptop, and you know, as you're typing a long paper you need a drink," he said. "So after I got it and put it in the recycling bin, all of a sudden two people jumped me and said, 'Hey, you got caught recycling.' It was all very covert and sneaky… but it was pretty cool."

Wilde noted, however, that despite raising his own recycling awareness, he was not sure how effective the campaign would be on influencing those individuals who do not already recycle.

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