Beginning in the fall of 2007, students will be taking out their own trash.

The college is switching over to a full campus Central Waste Disposal System (CWDS) over the summer.

The new system means that there will no longer be trash receptacles in any of the residential buildings. Students will be responsible for taking their trash directly from their rooms to the dumpster nearest to them.

Currently 81.5 percent of the residential buildings operate under a CWDS. The buildings that do not are Wesley, Seaton, Twin and Whitehouse.

According to Mark Frever, grounds supervisor, the driving force behind the change was a student senate initiative passed on Oct. 30 of last year. Frever said that the administration was more willing to listen to the proposal with student support behind it. He had been considering a similar change prior to the senate initiative.

Catherine Fontana, Dearborn junior and student senate president, established the central waste disposal commission in October within senate to discuss ways that the college could lower the costs of trash removal and encourage recycling.

"Conversations regarding recycling have been on-going since fall 2005, when the E-house took a proactive role in revising recycling opportunities on campus," Fontana said. "Senate was fully included in the discussion this past October."

The senate initiative recommended to facilities that the entire campus be switched over to a CWDS.

Fontana noted that the opposition to the legislation focused mainly on student dissatisfaction with the program because it will require more effort on their part, and the potential of students finding ways to work around the program that will simply create more problems in the residence halls.

One staff member, who wished to remain anonymous, agrees with the concerns.

"Frankly, I do not have confidence in what is essentially a volunteer trash dumping system," the staff member said. "Dorms are going to end up stinking and reeking with weeks, if not months, worth of trash that some lazy students have neglected to take to dumpsters."

The legislation was passed unanimously by student senate.

To implement this system, dumpsters will be placed on patios near residential building doors with the most traffic between the building and the quad to make it easier and more convenient for students to dispose their trash.

"It’s really a response to the costs of having trash cans in the buildings," Frever said.

Costs associated with trash collection included the contract services for collecting trash, wages for custodial staff and workman’s compensation costs for staff injured while removing trash.

Although the college is investing $110,000 into new equipment to make this change, Frever expects that it will greatly reduce the annual costs associated with trash disposal.

"We were spending $71,000 annually on contract services," Frever said. "I predict that we will be down to $40,000 next year."

The college will now be collecting the trash from dumpsters placed around campus and compacting it on site, as opposed to at a dump.

The change will allow the college to switch from a volume-based trash collection service (where the college was charged a flat rate for collection potential) to a weight-based system which allows the college to pay only for the trash disposed.

"Some days we paid for air, if [the dumpsters] weren’t full," Frever said. "We paid for 270 cubic yards of trash, but I’d estimate that our average output was only 170 cubic yards.

"But I couldn’t lower the amount of potential refuse because we needed the number of receptacles that we had."

Frever also notes that students will now have the opportunity to affect how much the college pays for trash collection through their recycling efforts.

"Before, we didn’t have [a monetary] incentive to recycle," Frever said. "Now, recycling items that were previously thrown away will cut down on costs."

According to Frever, six bins for recyclable material (plastic, tin, paper, cardboard, glass and newspaper) will be located next to the dumpsters to encourage recycling.

"I think [the new system is] good," said Sara Pump, Wesley Hall residential director, in an e-mail response. "It is definitely going to be a change for our returning students in the residence halls, who I think will have the most problems with it, simply because it’s a huge change compared to what they are used to.

"It’s going to be easier with each year that we have it on campus."

Kate Van Ness, Spring Lake sophomore and future Wesley R.A., is worried about the negative repercussions of removing the trash cans.

"Honestly, I am going to have to chase down my residents all the time reminding them that they can’t put their [garbage] in the bathroom" Van Ness said.

One benefit of the change that Frever is confident students will appreciate is the difference in the amount of noise associated with trash collection.