Eli Stogsdill likes his friends.

They’re good people.

But the eco-friendly Stogsdill, 20, grew weary of his friends’ environmentally unsound practice of throwing away bottles, cans and other recyclable goods.

So he struck a deal with them.

“I said if they would recycle, I would pick it up,” Stogsdill said.

It’s not quite clockwork, but usually every week for the past several months, Stogsdill has picked up the recycling at five of his friends’ places and hauled it to a recycling drop center.

The city doesn’t offer a curbside recycling program. There are companies that provide curbside recycling in Lawrence for a fee.

Stogsdill, an environmental studies student at Kansas University, isn’t getting paid to pick up the recyclables, but said the gasoline cost and the mileage put on his truck is worth it.

“It’s just a really important aspect of developing environmental awareness,” he said. “We tend to be pretty wasteful in this country and I think it’s bizarre that we just throw things away.”

Eli Stogsdill, a Kansas University junior from Lawrence, loads the bed of his truck with recycling bins. Stogsdill picks up recyclable items at his friends' homes every week and then drops off the items at the Wal-Mart Recycling Center, 3300 Iowa.

In 2003, Lawrence generated 68,697 tons of garbage, including grass clippings, furniture, clothing, bottles, food scraps, newspapers, appliances, paint and batteries. That’s up from the 65,830 tons of trash tossed in 2002 and the 63,855 tons in 2001.

But recycling rates also have increased.

The Lawrence recycling rate was 34 percent in 2003, said Mollie Mangerich, operations supervisor for the city of Lawrence’s waste reduction and recycling division. In 2001, the United States had a recycling rate of 30 percent — Lawrence had the same rate that year.

“I think the city of Lawrence is quite good about recycling just based on participation,” Mangerich said.

She said 30 percent of residential trash is usually made up of yard waste, such as grass clippings. Twenty-seven percent of the trash from businesses is cardboard boxes, Mangerich said.

Residential recycling in Lawrence.

Because of the high volume of grass clippings and cardboard boxes, she said the city has programs to make it simple for people to get rid of the items without tossing them in the garbage can.

The city’s waste division will pick up yard waste in residential areas and collect cardboard boxes from businesses throughout the work week, Mangerich said.

She said some people don’t recycle because they don’t know where to drop off items.

“I think it’s a matter of perceived inconveniences and people just not realizing,” Mangerich said. “But there’s also a percentage of the population that aren’t able to do it or don’t really care to do it.”

Stogsdill said he thinks people are willing to grow and change, but sometimes they need help to do it. He hopes that by picking up recyclables, his friends will get in the habit.

“Recycling is the least you can do,” Stogsdill said. “We ought to be recycling everything. It doesn’t make sense to produce so much waste.”