Iowa State was chosen by the Iowa Recycling Association for its annual award recognizing the best school recycling program in the state.

The award will be presented to ISU at the association’s annual fall dinner in Cedar Rapids on Oct. 26. Accepting the award for ISU will be Gloria Erickson, program assistant in facilities planning and management and chairwoman of the Recycling Committee; Norm Hill, manager of Central Stores; and Chris Ahoy, associate vice president of facilities planning and management.

This is the first time ISU has received a nomination for this award, Erickson said. The success and recognition of the program can be attributed to the variety of ways ISU recycles, she said.

“We just have a large variety of programs going on; that helped us win this award,” Erickson said. “My hope is that people will recognize how many programs we have.”

Recycling projects include generating close to 550 tons of compost a year from the university’s own site; recycling white paper, scrap metal and phone books; donating wooden pallets and firewood to the community; and recycling the ash from the heating plant to be used to fill limestone quarries.

Last February, ISU also started a pilot program in recycling newspapers.

Erickson said the project started out in six buildings, and it now has expanded to 12 buildings and three lecture halls.

Nonflammable, newspaper recycling bins can be found in Pearson Hall, Carver Hall, Coover Hall, Gilman Hall, Bessey Hall, Physics Hall, Beardshear Hall, the College of Design, the Armory, the Hub, the Memorial Union, Parks Library and Lush Auditorium.

Fresh Air Delivery takes care of the bins about twice a week, said Recycling Committee member Kelly Wilkening, senior in hotel, restaurant and institution management.

Although the award is a great honor for the ISU Recycling Committee, the members already are looking to the future.

“Our biggest problem we’re running into is funding,” said Katie Theisen, member of the committee and junior in environmental science. “We only have a newspaper pilot program. Through great funding, we could have a newspaper recycling bin at every Daily site.”

It is Wilkening’s hope that the program will eventually expand to every building on campus. “We would like to see recycling a campuswide event,” she said.