Since 1994, Glen R. Foth, State Center Community College District manager for grounds services, has been busy encouraging students and staff at Fresno City College to recycle.

Keeping the FCC campus clean is one of Foth’s responsibilities, a task that requires several staff members and consumes two hours of their time everyday.

“One reason to keep the recycling going is to keep the trash off the campus,” said Foth.

FCC takes a very proactive approach when it comes to recycling, providing over 150 trash bins for garbage and several blue bins for plastic bottles and aluminum cans.

Waste Management also provides large green recycle dumpsters that take a variety of recyclables: cardboard, plastic bottles, magazines, white paper, color paper, telephone books, aluminum cans, glass bottles, bulk mail and folders.

Two green Waste Management dumpsters can be found behind the bookstore building.

“People are trying to do the right thing,” Foth said, referring to students and staff’s commitment to recycling.

But FCC doesn’t only recycle plastic bottles and paper.

“We recycle green waste as well,” Christine D. Miktarian, associate vice chancellor of business and operations, said.

“All our trimmings (and) grass that we pick up because it’s big piles, the pine needles, all that gets recycled,” Foth said.

Still, recycling at FCC is not limited to green or paper and plastic waste.

“We do a pretty good job at recycling even office furniture and stuff like that,” Foth said.

“Even some of the odd stuff that people don’t think about like old computers that we’re getting rid of go into what we call a boneyard then they get sold for recycling,” Foth said. “We just had one of our guys work on a bunch of the old chairs that were broken and no longer in use.”

Foth said those used materials were recycled at Allens Recycling.

Miktarian said recycling at the college could be improved. “We do want to improve and we’re always looking for ways,” Miktarian said, explaining that blue recycling bins are located in almost every office.

In addition to recycling, the college campus is going one step further. Thanks to Proposition 39, a lighting project is underway that will replace old light bulbs.

“The other thing that is really great is that in our Prop 39 lighting project, we require the contractor to recycle those lights, so they’re just not thrown away,” Miktarian said. “That’s part of the contract.”

With many renovations done at the college, all the old concrete and asphalt has been recycled, according to Foth.

Foth encourages students district-wide to participate in a recycling campaign he calls “Trash Thursdays”.

The idea behind the campaign: pick up campus trash and dispose it in proper cans or bins every Thursday.

The goal: keep FCC clean.