The 
Founded by two freshman roommates, Dominic Thomas '94 and Joshua
Klainberg '94, in September of 1990, BURP! has grown to be an
established part of the Brandeis community. Even though Josh and
Dominic came from different parts of the country, Josh from Long
Island and Dominic from Georgia, they had the common experience of
being active in developing their communities and being concerned
about the environment. Brandeis promised to parallel these interests
as a Liberal Arts university with one of the world's most active
student bodies, but it immediately became apparent that Brandeis
lacked a recycling program.
To remedy the situation, Dominic and Josh determined to start a
"recycling program." Of course, neither of them having any experience
developing anything close to a "recycling program" for their house,
much less for a university, they had a lot of thinking, planning and
seat-of-the-pants work to do. They had to start thinking about: how
to organize the thing, who would do what, how, when, where would they
come from, why would they stay involved, once collected, where would
the recyclables go, would the administration help, where were the
recyclables to be collected, how many, how firesafe, etc. Fortunately
they did not face the majority of these questions at first, or they
probably would have either become eco-terrorists or mindless
blobs.
They did not have bins, storage area, permission, collection
arrangements or volunteers. They had each other and a full can of
Maxwell House Instant coffee (for energy purposes). The first action
the duo took was setting up a recycling site on their hallway,
Scheffres' first floor, and naming the "program." They took cardboard
boxes from the garbage and sweet-talked the custodians. Scrap pieces
of paper made suitable media for advertisements within the building.
The first membership drive involved enticing hallmates to commit to
the quixotic adventure of creating the "program." Somewhere in these
early stages, late one night after a game of spades and some "jet
fluid" coffee, God visited Josh with the acronym B.U.R.P. It was
perfect. They had struggled over the name for a couple of days. Then
it just came. It was at once practical, catchy, funny, lighthearted
and memorable. It seemed to have the necessary essence to focus the
effort. So, at about 3 a.m. on that late-September night, they agreed
upon the "program" being called "BURP!" Dominic added the"!" for
emphasis and enthusiasm.
After about a week running the pirate program, Josh and Dominic
attended a Students of Environmental Awareness meeting. (The name was
re-changed later to Students for Environmental Action.) They hoped to
generate excitement for the program and to find membership and
resources already extant but unknown. The Castle Commons was packed
with about 100 students, half of which signed up for the "recycling
committee." At the meeting SEA President Sarah Selikowitz '93
revealed the absence of a recycling program and the lack of
predetermined committee heads. Things were pretty unorganized.
Dominic and Josh realized they could make their program more
legitimate by heading the SEA Recycling Committee. Along with about
ten other people, they raised their hands when Sarah called: "Who
wants to head the Recycling Committee?"
Since no one else did anything concrete in the next week or so, by
default Josh and Dominic became the committee's heads. Within SEA,
BURP! set up 30 sites for bottles, cans and paper throughout halls in
Massell, North, East and the Castle by the end of September. They
collected the stuff and stored it wherever they could. Soon members
started coming up with places here and there, and they found the
Fernald School to take redeemables. (Sarah found an old receipt from
an old recycling attempt. It was the link.)
The pirate hallway program was short-lived. Here and there, sites would disappear during October. Finally, in the middle of November an official memorandum from Alwina Bennett condemned the progress of the program and commanded its removal by Physical Plant (Facilities Management). The program was cited as a fire hazard and a rodent and bug magnet. Residents and parents had complained. Officially, the program was ended. This measure, which at first seemed crippling to future efforts, actually was recycling's first official recognition. As such, it was the first step toward brokering a deal to establish recycling openly. The University, expending its energy to stop the program, displayed that there was energy available for recycling. (At least, this is what Dominic and Josh interpreted.)
In the meantime, Josh and Dominic took the program underground. Members like Ben Resnick '94 and Amy White '94 headed up quads. They publicized collection door-to-door and arranged quad volunteers and places to make collection work. Late night "runs" and meetings became the norm. The members drew strength from the common oppression and experiences. They were driven to recycle.
Through a number of meetings and agreements, Josh and Dominic achieved a formal, signed document by mid-February '91. This is the "Brandeis Bottle & Can Temporary Recycling Program." This document became a key for expanding BURP!'s efforts till today and acknowledged that the administration recognized the program. Finally, at the beginning of December '91, Glenn Rubenstein '82 and Susan Sokol ‘83 graciously donated $1000 to the new program for the purchase of a used golf cart: the BURP! mobile. BURP! then slowly nestled itself in the comfortable, spacy halls of the East Quad Loading Dock where it stored all of the redeemable materials it collected.. The program now had an office, a vehicle and was formally recognized by the university.
Despite the efforts and extensive amount of labor the two put into
the program, they faced an even greater problem in their senior year.
Who would take-over their position, and would those two new general
coordinators nuture BURP! with the proper enthusiasm and
volunteerism? In an effort to recruit more members and potential
coordinators, Dominic, Josh and Ben kept their eyes and ears open.
There was Tiffany Glassman ‘96, a bright, dedicated volunteer.
Despite her frequent attendance at weekend recycling runs and her
excellent quality to lead a group of people when nobody took the
initiative, she rejected their offer. Then, a freshmen by the name of
Dieter
Fenkart-Froeschl ‘97 caught their attention. He had volunteered
to take the position of White Paper Coordinator after speaking to
Dominic during a weekend recycling run. He was originally from
Vienna, Austria, but spoke english like a native. He and the other
White Paper Coordinator Amy Magee '95 worked together making sure the
recycling bins in the mailroom were properly sorted and emptied.
Dieter clearly excelled in his position and Josh told Dieter how
impressed he was with his work. Dieter suggested painting the
mailroom bins a different color to make people more aware of the
sorting process. Soon afterwards, Josh organized a 'paint day,' and a
few dedicated volunteers gathered in the S.E.A. office in Usdan to
help paint the mailroom bins. Towards the end of the day, Josh and
Dieter were sitting outside on the loading dock, brushing the last
bin when suddenly the radio began playing, "The Devil and the
Fiddler." Josh asked Dieter whether he had ever heard the song and
Dieter replied, "no." However, Dieter was no spoil-sport and while
Josh was singing loudly, Dieter did a small square-dance he had once
seen in a "The Wonder Years" episode. They had bonded.
Karen Martin ‘97 was also a potential candidate for the general
coordinator position too. She had gone to almost every weekend
recycling run throughout the year and knew a lot about the
ins-and-outs of BURP! Originally from Waltham, Massachusetts, she
would also have less trouble arriving early on campus to set-up and
leaving late to shut-down the program. Furthermore, she had already
coordinated a few weekend recycling runs and had called Bruce
Clendingen from BWAC - Beaverbrook Work Activity Center to schedule a
pick-up of the stored recyclables. Karen also displayed a deep desire
to improve and increase the existing program and, thus, clearly
demonstrated her capability of becoming the second candidate for the
coordinator position.
In the midst of coming up with a time during which the General
Coordinator Selection Committee could meet, Dominic worked hard on
chartering BURP! as an official club with its own goals and
aspirations. BURP! had grown too large to be a sub-committee of
S.E.A. Hefty verbal battles plagued the S.E.A. Office day-in,
day-out, and at times, things were said that should not have been
said. However, despite the strong opposition from certain S.E.A.
volunteers, BURP! officially became a separate entity in February,
1994.
Soon after Karen and Dieter assumed their positions in Fall 1994,
the S.E.A. office was renamed the Environmental Office. Tension
between the two coordinators went unnoticed at first, but towards the
end of the semester Karen could no longer work together with Dieter.
Dieter had slacked the entire semester and had never truly helped
Karen in her struggle with the administration and lacking volunteers.
He contributed to the program by coming to almost every weekend
recycling run, but academics were a priority to him. While Karen also
tried hard to expand the program to other parts on campus, Dieter
felt they should follow a policy of "Getting to know" the program
before blindly making it grow to an uncontrollable size. Tamara
Schwarz ‘96, one of the great names in Brandeis Environmental
history, acted as a mediator between the two and came to their aid
when things got out of hand. Aside from the internal conflict, BURP!
struggled with other things. The weekend recycling runs had been a
hassle because hardly anybody showed up, publicity was at a low-point
because Karen also had school work to do, the
BURP! mobile constantly broke down and the
White Paper Recycling Program came to a stand still because Amy could
no longer coordinate it. In conclusion, something needed to be done
to remedy the situation and assure the survival of BURP!
Nevertheless, Tiffany and Alex Tsalolikhin ‘98 stuck with the program
through thick and thin and came to every weekend recycling run. Alex
offered to help with whatever task BURP! needed done and showed
absolute dedication in BURP! activities.
Dieter and Karen also encountered a severe problem with the recycling
sheds in Grad and the Mods. They were made of very thin and light
tin, and had frequent, unwelcomed visitors: vermin and rodents.
Furthermore, the police department had not allowed the BURP! mobile
to cross South Street. During the weekend recycling runs, Alon Gordon
‘95 let BURP! use his father’s car to pick-up the Grad and Mods
recyclables. Following a couple of meetings and a formal letter,
Karen worked out an agreement with Facilities Management to allow
BURP! usage of Facilities truck #13 on the weekends effective as of
October 1994, thereby allowing BURP! to fully service the two quads.
(BURP! still uses the BURP! mobile, but collecting all the material
on campus without using the Facilities Truck would be an unthinkable
task nowadays.)
Dieter began to realize that being general coordinator did not
merely mean fun and play (and a good resume title). He woke-up to
reality when Karen threw in the towel and quit BURP! because she
needed to take a job that paid. She presented her reasons during a
Core Committee Meeting and made it clear that BURP! volunteers needed
to be paid, otherwise the program would fall apart. The Director of
Facilities Management Ruth Ianazzo listened closely and grasped the
truth in Karen’s words. Shortly after that, she and George Bogosian
discussed the details of Karen’s proposal which they then presented
to Dieter in the Spring of 1995.
The program had come to a stand still for a week and things looked
bad. While sitting up late one night with a bar of Austrian chocolate
instead of a can of Maxwell House Instant coffee (for energy
purposes), Dieter sorted his out in his head. He
chose what he thought was right and swore an oath to never let BURP!
succumb to weakness or failure, whether it meant working late into
the night, recycling alone or skipping classes.
He began the struggle by finding a temporary general coordinator
who would aid him throughout the Spring semester. Tamara suggested
Patrick Conway ‘95 and two weeks later, Pat was officially Dieter’s
new co-coordinator. Dieter had already decided to apply for the
general coordinator position for the next year and had also decided
to convince Suchitra Shenoy ‘98, an enthusiastic volunteer, to apply
with him. She was from Bombay, India and loved Winnie the Pooh.
Dieter scratched his policy of "Getting to know" and began expanding.
He first purchased two new outdoor recycling bins for the library and
the walkpath outside of the Snackery. Then he put a recycling bin in
Tower B of the Castle and continued the discussions between
Facilities Management and the Science Complex. By the end of the
Spring semester, an agreement had been established that allowed the
Science Labs to store most of their glass and plastics in a shed for
recycling purposes. Bill Kelloway, a very environmentally aware
scientist, played a large role in the entire process.
Dieter was getting a feel for everything and spent less time asking
Tamara questions, but finding the answers himself. Discussions with
Facilities about payment also continued and it was decided that
payment would begin as of the Fall 1995 semester. One fateful Sunday,
Josh (Grandpa BURP!) visited to participate in a weekend recycling
run. Alon brought David Ekstrom ‘96 to that weekend recycling run
too. Dave worked silently, but efficiently and was very polite.
Dieter thought that Dave was another person whom he would never see
at a weekend recycling run ever again. Little did he know that Dave
was to be one of the most dedicated BURP! volunteers. During that
recycling run, Dieter also came up with the idea of the
Recycling Olympics. He felt that BURP! needed
to attract more attention to itself and make the Brandeis Community
realize that BURP! was not merely a club ‘that goes through other
people’s trash.’Coca-Cola sponsored the event and Dieter had T-Shirts
made for the first Brandeis University Recycling Olympics on the 8th
of April, 1995. A total of 90 people showed up on the wet, windy,
rainy, snowy day.
However, life was not rosy and peachy, and BURP! still encountered
several serious problems. Dieter and Pat had a hard time recruiting
volunteers and the winter gave them problems too. Since Facilities
Management needed the truck on weekends to clear the snowy roads,
BURP! had to resort to solely using the BURP!
mobile. One night, Dieter wanted to test how the road conditions
were and upon driving the BURP! mobile out of the Loading Dock on to
the road, he realized how bad the roads were: While driving down the
small hill the East Quad Loading Dock is located on, the vehicle lost
grip and began sliding. Dieter slammed on the brakes and made the
situation worse. He quickly grabbed hold of a handle bar and visions
of the Titanic passed through his head. Just like the Titantic was
stopped by a big, unbreakable object, the BURP! mobile was to suffer
the same fate with a rapidly approaching tree. Dieter wondered
whether the captain of the Titanic had thought about abandoning the
sinking boat. Dieter’s "boat" was sinking too... Not into water, but
into snow! Like lightning the cart stopped dead in its tracks a foot
before the tree. Instead of rejoicing, Dieter cursed the slippery
snow and the lack of traction on the mobile, and with the help of
Usen 1st floor (Nathan
Raymond ‘99, Ashiq Shamsi ‘99,
Ari Lanin
‘97, Manish Makhija '96, Juhoon Ahn ‘95, Joel Friedlander ‘99) he
pushed the BURP! mobile back into the garage and cancelled the
weekend recycling run. And to make the situation worse, Alex, who had
never missed one weekend recycling run, decided to take some time off
from college and fly back home to California.
After locking up for the summer, Pat graduated and Suchi and
Dieter were officially the new General Coordinators. Over the summer
vacation, Tamara and Karen worked together with George and Ruth to
find a new recycling vendor who would collect all the materials
comingled. An attempt had been made the year before, but it had
failed. The four of them put together a letter which they sent out to
different recycling companies. Upon returning to the United States in
August, Dieter looked over the proposals with George, Tamara and
Suchi. Microsoft Excel provided excellent service and a wonderful
overview of the various companies and their proposals. Soon, the four
of them decided to hire Conigliaro Industries for comingled pick-up
of glass, aluminum and plastics, and Office Paper Recovery Systems
was chosen to handle all the paper recycling.
Before the new Conigliaro contract went into effect, Suchi and Dieter
had to coordinate one more weekend recycling run the old-fashioned
method. The third weekend into September, Dieter and Suchi waited at
the East Quad Loading Dock at 8:45 in the morning for other
volunteers to show-up. They had been up to their necks in work and
had forgotten to call volunteers to help. They waited and hoped for
dedicated volunteers who didn’t require a phone call. While rummaging
through some bins in the back, they heard a clear, confident voice
from the entrance to the Loading Dock, "Could you use a helping
hand." Confused at how the sentence was phrased, but filled with joy
that somebody had showed up, the two of them turned around to find
Alex standing in the doorway! He had flown in from California to
participate on one final weekend recycling run and visit a friend at
Brandeis. Then Kruti Parekh ‘97 showed up. Despite the amount of
material they had to sort through and the limited number of people
they had, Dieter and Suchi knew that run would be an unforgettable
end to the old system. Alex truly demonstrated the spirit of a BURP!
volunteer. "Once a BURP!er, always a BURP!er."
Upon arrival of the new 30 yard roll-off
container, Dieter and Suchi immediately deposited the material
which had been piling up in the back of the East
Quad Loading Dock. Two hundred and fourty-one bags of glass (or
21,208 pounds of glass at approximately 88 pounds per bag) went into
the Conigliaro container that day, and with them, the tedious
old-fashioned method they employed during weekend recycling runs. It
was the beginning of something new and exciting, and the end of
something memorable and impressive.
Aside from working on the new program, Dieter and Suchi met new first
year students which they tried recruiting. After meeting with Rick
Sawyer from Campus Life, Dieter and Suchi began working on BURP!’s
internal structure. There was very little structure within BURP!, but
within a few days, the two international students had developed a
perfect new system. The weekend recycling runs ran much more smoothly
and the number of volunteers was no longer a major problem (Suchi
gave most of the volunteers wake-up calls and became known as the
‘mean’coordinator) Opposed to the old recycling runs which usually
lasted 6-8 hours with 6 volunteers, the new program made it so easy
that 4 volunteers could easily service the campus in 2 hours! And the
Paper Program, headed by Melissa Lim ‘98, Lori Sapir ‘99 and Nancy
Diamond ‘99, ran more smoothly too. Especially since white and
colored paper no longer had to be sorted. Dieter and Suchi continued
the expansion Dieter had begun in the Spring semester and a bin was
placed in Sachar, near the Feldberg Computer Cluster Help Desk, on
top of Rabb Steps and at one of the entrances to Hassenfeld.
Furthermore, Dieter decided it was time to throw-out the ugly Grad
and Mods sheds. With the help of some volunteers, they built
beautiful, sturdy blue sheds from wood. Suchi, on the other hand,
decided it was time to throw-out all the long names people had given
certain locations or programs. The Environmental Office was renamed
E-Office; the East Quad Loading Dock became known as the EQLD; and
the Brandeis University Recycling Olympics was called BURO. She
thought that by keeping long names short, Dieter and her would not
spend so much time talking, but acting upon their ideas.
When the BURP! mobile finally gave in to the
pressure of depreciation and blew up in transit from the Economic’s
building to the East Quad Loading Dock, Dieter, Suchi and Tamara
decided it was time to look into getting another one. The task was
assigned to Brian Irwin ‘98 and Kruti. They made phone calls and
wrote letters, and not long afterwards were presented with a 1982
electrically driven Yamaha golf cart: exactly the same model as the
old BURP! mobile. Upon viewing it, Dieter and Suchi signed a 256
dollar check to purchase it. Dieter also took another good look at
the old BURP! mobile and found that one of the batteries had blown
and there was a metal bar jammed into the back left wheel. During a
quarrel as to what gender the two different BURP! mobiles were, Brian
and Jennifer Gruda ‘98 came up with the idea of replacing one of the
new mobile’s batteries with one of the old mobile’s batteries to see
if the old one worked. This was promptly done and to their surprise,
the old one worked fine. BURP! was ready to rock’n’roll with a fleet
of BURP! mobiles.
After a long discussion, Suchi presented Dieter with the idea of having the two of them step-down from the General Coordinator position and hold elections for new General Coordinators. Fearing that after Dieter graduated the program would be extremely difficult to take-over if nobody new was trained, Dieter agreed with Suchi and held general elections. Jennifer and Brian both committed fully to the program and were also interested in the position. Jen, originally from Jaffrey, New Hampshire, had an insatiable thirst for knowledge and was honest, prompt and efficient with her work. Brian, a witty Massachusett’s native (Framingham), had a hearty laugh, a strong sense of loyalty and was very aware of his natural surroundings and how necessary Community Service was. The two together comprised the perfect duo!
After spending many hours planning and discussing events for the
second Brandeis University Recycling Olympics
(and eating Noah Bleich's '98 delicious pancakes), Brian, Jen, Noah,
Dieter and Suchi finally had a concrete idea about what food to
serve, what events to hold and what prizes to give to participants.
Nantucket Nectars sponsored the event and various administrative
members were invited to judge to the events. It was a clear, bright,
warm sunny Sunday morning when BURP! volunteers began setting up
tables on Chapel’s Field. Noah, Jen and Josh Sklaroff ‘97 started up
the grills, anticipating the moment they could give the first visitor
a burger on the reusable frisbees! By 2 in the afternoon, most of the
250 burgers had been eaten and the majority of the 480 Nantucket
Nectars bottles were empty. President Jehuda Reinharz and his wife
Shulamit showed up spontaneously and also participated in the Water
Jug Pop. They were then invited to a ride on
the BURP! mobile. Approximately 220 people showed up that day and
rumors have it that Josh (Grandpa BURP!) cheated during one of the
events..
Jen and Brian both worked hard on improving the system. In January 1997, Dieter wrote President Reinharz a letter regarding the institutionalization of BURP! and how necessary it had become. After several meetings with Dean Rod Crafts, Shelley Kaplan and Director of Facilities Management Ruth Iannazzo, Dieter realized that the program was lacking weekly meetings for scheduling purposes. He told Brian and Jen his idea which they agreed with. In addition, Dieter repealed his request for a full-time recycling coordinator and asked that Facilities Management assign custodians to act as quad captains to facilitate the picking-up of recyclables. Ruth agreed and a Pilot Program began.
Slowly, but surely BURP! is becoming a part of Facilities Management.
