New recycling program hopes to collect a million used pens

Instead of throwing away old pens, students will consider recycling them for a good cause.

The University’s new recycling program will donate writing utensils to the company TerraCycle, which will use them to create marketable products.

TerraCycle will give Penn two cents for each writing instrument, and the money will go toward the Green Fund, a part of the Climate Action Plan.

The initiative’s overall goal is to collect a million pens in order to donate $20,000 to the Green Fund, according to Director of Purchasing JoAnn Murphy. The program was originally launched in January alongside RecycleMania and will be ongoing, Murphy said.

One of the important goals of the collection is to show students that “we can re-use everything in our life, that there is no need to create further waste or to use materials unnecessarily,” said Rodin College House Eco-Rep Amy Smith, a College junior.

Penn is one of the first colleges to use the “brand new” TerraCycle program, according to Business Services spokeswoman Barbara Lea-Kruger. TerraCycle refers to this program as “up-cycling” because it uses old material and creates new products like flower pots, lunch bags and photo frames, she said.

Writing utensil recycling boxes have been placed in Rodin, Hill and King’s Court College Houses and are used for sharpies, highlighters, markers, pencils, crayons and correction tape dispensers, Murphy said. The next step, she added, is to market the program through RecycleMania in order to recruit more people to implement the boxes in other houses before PennMOVES, when students donate unneeded items before they leave for the summer.

There are approximately 35 staff members involved in the recycling project on campus, and in some locations, coordinators craft their own collection boxes in their offices, Murphy said.

This is another way that Penn students can become involved in the recycling process, and “our job is to educate people about recycling their writing utensils and let them know that there are other ways to recycle other than the traditional methods,” Hill College House Eco-Rep and Wharton and Engineering freshman John Foye said.

As long as students are aware of the program and collection boxes are easily accessible, this recycling initiative will “definitely be a success” even if there is only a small amount collected because “every little bit will help,” Foye said.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.