Saturday and Sunday mornings, pledges wake up at dawn and drag themselves to their fraternity houses to sweep a dirty floor covered with hundreds of empty beer cans and red Solo cups.
The scene already looks impossible to clean, without the added hassle of recycling, which is why many fraternities simply don't do it.
Sophomore Nick Gilson, a member of Pi Kappa Alpha (Pike) said, "We have a dumpster out back ... but as far as recycling goes, it's hard to incorporate that."
Gilson said that while many brothers are members of the Sustainable Hopkins Initiative and other environmental organizations, they have not yet applied their projects to the house.
"Some of the brothers are involved in environmental projects outside of the fraternity. For the most part, the people at Pike are very involved in other social service activities and the sustainability club," Gilson said.
Seemingly, even environmentally inclined students within the fraternities don't feel the need to change the fraternities' practices.
"I'm working in a lot of other clubs on campus, a lot of them sustainability oriented," Gilson said. "I am personally not worked up on bringing this to the fraternity house right now, I'm currently working on a project involving the AMRs."
Despite not feeling the need to implement a fraternity-wide sustainability plan, Gilson still insists that he is conscious about the environment within his own home.
"I do recycle in my room, I turn off my lights, and everyone I know in the house turns off their lights. Having a fraternity-wide recycling program would be excellent, but I don't think that it is exactly possible."
According to Rob Turning, coordinator of Greek Life at Hopkins, there are no current campus-wide regulations for fraternities' sustainability, so it is up to the brothers to take responsibility.
Some fraternities, such as Alpha Epsilon Pi (AEPi), are still very conscientious about their effects on the environment.
Justin Silverman, a sophomore AEPi brother, said, "Our members are pretty good about recycling. We recycle all of our solo cups, cans and anything else that is recyclable that is in the house. We also sort all of our trash."
Most chapters, however, are unable to be as efficient with recycling after parties. Junior Affan Sheikh, president of Phi Kappa Psi (Phi Psi), described how his chapter tried to implement recycling during their parties but was unsuccessful.
"Last year we tried, but it ended up being very, very difficult. Even if you designate a trashcan for just cans, people generally don't follow that [during parties]. People will throw other trash in there or a half filled beer can, so there will be liquid in the garbage as well, and then you have to go through the trash yourself to get it out," Sheikh said.
In smaller party settings, where the brothers have more control over what is going into the recycling bins, they usually purchase a keg, which eliminates the issue of recycling cans.
"I think some of the pledges were trying to get a recycling thing going recently, like this year, but I don't think it actually got off the ground. We've tried to, but it's very hard to follow up on," Sheikh said.
Junior Charles Han, president of Beta Theta Pi (Beta), said, "We started trying to, but at most recent parties we have not been able to recycle cans." However, Han said that Beta has been able to recycle after small fraternity get-togethers.
Each fraternity does try to help lower their negative impact on the environment in other ways.
"[Pike is] pretty good about turning off the lights as we leave the room because we pay for our own utilities bill, so there's another monetary incentive for us to do it and to make sure we are not using as much energy," Gilson said.
Affan said of Phi Psi, "As a house, we try to buy energy-efficient light bulbs and keep the heat off or the energy low. We recently sealed up a bunch of the window-panes because they were letting heat out."
Members of most fraternities are involved in the sustainability clubs at Hopkins and use that to further campus-wide sustainability initiatives, rather than improving conditions within their own houses.
