Students living in UI residence halls are still waiting for expanded recycling capabilities, while others remain with none.

University Housing Director Von Stange said officials are in the process of providing expanded recycling service to dorms west of the Iowa River — Hillcrest, Rienow, Slater, and Quadrangle.

All West Side dorms except for Hillcrest have some sort of recycling program, but officials hope to broaden them by placing more than 1,000 small bins in dorm rooms, allowing students to recycle paper, cardboard, plastic, and aluminum. Stange said he hopes the bins, which cost roughly $3 each, will be delivered sometime this week.

“These are cardboard-type containers,” He said. “We would hope to transition to permanent plastic or canvas totes in the future.”

Hillcrest and Quadrangle residents will be able to empty their bins into receptacles located in trash rooms on each floor. Students living in Rienow and Slater will still have to take their bins to basement trash rooms.

Quadrangle is the only dorm already using expanded recycling, but it still requires residents to take their recyclables to a main-floor collection area. Rienow and Slater can only recycle paper and cardboard in their basement collection area, and Hillcrest residents cannot recycle until their bins are delivered and student staff members are put in place to properly handle recycling deposits.

Megan Ranegar, a freshman biology student and Hillcrest resident, said she and her roommates keep recyclable items but aren’t sure what to do with them yet.

“We don’t want to just throw it out,” Ranegar said.

Hillcrest coordinator Ben Parks said the fear of people throwing trash in the residence hall’s recycling bin has prompted him to wait until the new system is in place.

“I don’t know what we have in place right now,” Stange said about the West Side residence halls. “We’re planning on taking a systematic approach to encourage expanded recycling use; that will come with the containers.”

But the new recycling program won’t be implemented campuswide.

At the end of the year, University Housing officials will assess how successful the expanded recycling program has been. If they anticipate being able to manage it, expansion to the East Side will take place next year, Stange said.

While some East Side residence halls, such as Burge, provide paper and cardboard recycling to residents, capabilities at Currier, Stanley, Daum, and Parklawn are more murky, and Mayflower provides none. Mayflower’s problem relates to the layout of the building, which does not allow for receptacles to be placed in public areas without violating the fire code.

“We need to limit the approach and perfect the system. I’d rather do it on half the campus and not mess it up,” Stange said. “We want to provide a system that can encourage the most recycling, in the easiest ways, for the lowest cost.”

East Side residence-hall officials and residents are eager for expanded recycling to begin. Burge coordinator Amy Baccei said that in the past, students have organized their own collection inside the dorms and transported cans and bottles to recycling facilities on their own.

“We have signs on all floors and in all trash rooms,” she said. “It’s a staffing issue. We need resources to make it happen. Other than us literally washing out cans ourselves, there is nothing we can do.”