Over the past year, a group of Montana State University Billings students has created a long-term project to recycle aluminum cans and plastic bottles at the main and College of Technology campuses.

The university’s Environmental Awareness Club and student government joined forces to set up recycling bins.

MSU Billings has long collected recyclable waste, but previous attempts usually were done intermittently or on a building-by-building basis, said Joe Krenzer, EAC president.

Krenzer, a senior majoring in biology, is a 2004 graduate of Skyview High.

Sometimes students would start a recycling program only to have it wane after the organizers graduated.

About a year ago, Krenzer’s club and the Associated Students of MSU Billings developed a long-term, comprehensive recycling program. Because limited ASMSUB funds would be used to buy collection bins, students estimated that it might take five years to complete.

For phase one of the program, they had enough money to buy about 50 blue bins for recycling stations throughout the Liberal Arts Building and the library. Each station had three bins — one each for aluminum cans, plastic bottles and white office paper.

That was in April.

Over the summer, accounting student Jason Rodriguez, ASMSUB’s sustainability coordinator, learned that Coca-Cola helps recycling projects around the country.

With the support of ASMSUB president Tyler Harris and business manager Joe Godfrey, Rodriguez contacted Coke’s Billings office and got the company to donate 55-gallon plastic barrels used to ship concentrated Coca-Cola syrup.

Because of the large number of barrels the students needed, Coke had extras shipped in from the West Coast, said Doug Becker, the company’s sales center manager in Billings.

Coke also provided red-and-white plastic signs that wrap around the barrels and domed lids with holes for cans and bottles.

The student government bought plywood used to separate cans from plastic bottles.

Earlier this fall, seven Coke employees also worked with the students to convert the first set of barrels into recycling bins.

Since then, students have been working on the barrels on their own.

So far, about 20 of the barrels have been placed on campus, with another 25 nearly completed.

The barrels supplement the blue bins, which continue to be used.

By the time the project is done, Krenzer hopes that every building on both campuses will have at least one recycling receptacle.

Students seem to appreciate having a place to dump their bottles and cans because the containers have been filling up.

Over the summer, representatives of campus dorms also set up their own recycling containers.

Because of Coke’s help, Krenzer expects the former five-year project to be finished by the end of this semester, only about a year after it started.

The university contracts with Earth First Aid Curbside Recycling Service to empty the bins.

Allied Waste also has had a large recycling bin at the Science Building to collect paper, aluminum cans and newspapers. The company not only picks up the materials, it donates the money it gets from recycling the waste back to the environmental club.

As it wraps one environmentally friendly project, students are thinking about what to do next.

During spring semester, Rodriguez hopes to organize a contest in which people working in different buildings on campus compete to see who can reduce energy use the most.

Contact Mary Pickett at mpickett@billingsgazette.com or 657-1262.