Central Location

• Create a centralized space for recycling if your dorm doesn't have one. Find an unused corner or closet and place some bins labelled for paper, plastic and glass. Residents will be less likely to simply throw away their recyclables if they have a place to take them rather than keeping them in their rooms.
  
  

Contest

• Resident advisers -- students who essentially administrate floors or areas of dormitories -- often have to come up with events in which the residents of their floor can participate. An event focused on recycling can harness the power -- and material waste -- of the floor's residents for the benefit of the environment. Have residents save their recyclable trash and, at the end of the month, take it to a recycling center. The money you receive from the center can go toward a pizza party or movie night in the dorm, which would give the students incentive to recycle their waste rather than throw it away.
  
  

Decorations

• Save bottles and cans for use as decorations. Old soda bottles can be glued or taped together to make interesting sculptures and glass bottles can be filled with colored liquids and lit up for eye-catching aesthetics in an otherwise drab dormitory.
  
  

Reuse

• Not everything needs to be printed on fresh paper. Class notes, map directions, grocery lists and other one-off documents can be printed on the back side of a previously used sheet of paper. Those old sheets of paper were probably just going to be thrown away anyway, so this at least gets one more use out of them. Save the clean sheets for work you'll hand in, like final term papers.
  
  

Complete the Cycle

• The Environmental Protection Agency advises people to "complete the loop" and check a product's packaging for an indication that it's made from recycled materials. Keep this in mind when buying school supplies like paper, pencils and tape or dorm decorations like confetti or streamers.