Fresh Perspective

Jacob Kiser

Recycling Services Operations Manager at Clemson University

Jacob Kiser says a career in recycling fell into his lap. After high school, he struggled to find his niche in college and logistics, and nothing really stuck. But when a recycling operations position opened at Clemson University in South Carolina, he went for it.

“When I was looking into a permanent career, recycling stuck out,” he says.

For the past six years, Kiser has served as Clemson’s recycling services operations manager, overseeing on-campus recycling, the college’s material recovery facility and composting operations.

“I have learned so much getting into the field and going to trainings, getting certifications,” he says. “Those [knowledge gaps] have been huge challenges that I’ve been able to overcome.”

Since Kiser joined Clemson, the university has won the 2021 Game Day Recycling Challenge as well as a 2024 Carolina Recycling Association (CRA) Award for recycling 10,000 pounds of material and achieving an estimated 73 percent diversion rate at a football game in October 2023.

One of Kiser’s successes includes being elected to CRA’s board of directors, where he works to grow recycling awareness across the Carolinas. He says he’s also very proud of being able to introduce Clemson students to potential careers in the recycling industry.

In the following interview, Kiser discusses barriers to recycling across college campuses and student recycling initiatives at Clemson.

"When I was looking into a permanent career, recycling just stuck out.”

Recycling Today (RT): What are some challenges to recycling on college campuses and how can schools can better address them?

Jacob Kiser (JK): One of the unique challenges with a four-year campus, especially one that is not a commuter campus … is that we are always a revolving door of a community. We get students from all across the globe where … what we can recycle here in South Carolina is going to be completely different than what a student [can] recycle in Phoenix, Arizona. When we get a student here that comes from that area … they may be an extremely avid recycler, but when they get here, we may have a completely different stream. They may have [a] different setup of bins. They may [have had] a complete single stream, and we may be a multistream.

After [students] live one year on campus, they move off campus, so then they’re bringing items on and off campus, which is not necessarily as controlled as what you can purchase on campus. … That is a challenge we address by partnering with the city, having a local drop off and things like that. We partner with our education [initiatives]. It is the same education the city puts out in our area, so we all accept the same items.

RT: Are students involved with recycling on campus and can you tell me about those initiatives?

JK: We have tabling at different events on campus, whether it is with our EcoReps, which is a program that works through our residential life area on campus. We do staff training with the [resident advisers] on campus. We do game-day recycling, where we host different student organizations so they can come and get student volunteer hours. Sometimes we even have monetary funding … to have student groups come out and help us sort the recycling, pass out bags to tailgaters and educate others.

We also hire interns every semester. I always get one to two sustainability operations interns for my composting operation, and our education outreach coordinator gets them so she can have them help on the education-side as well.