A student recycles a water bottle into one of the University District Organization’s Can Fairies (Posed). Credit: Reegan Davis | Managing Campus Editor
As some off-campus students woke up, did their morning routine and made their way to their Monday morning classes, they returned home to a white and purple bin on their lawns.
At first glance, it may appear to be an average recycling bin. However, this wasn’t the bin students were used to seeing.
It was a Can Fairy.
Can Fairies, a University District Organization recycling program, is meant for students and anyone who resides off-campus to stop throwing cans, red solo cups and recyclable items on their lawn, including during home football games, and to put them in the Can Fairies instead. The bins – which look similar to average, plastic trash and recycle bins with the Can Fairy logo – were dropped off early on Monday at the houses of those who signed up for the 2026-2027 school year.
“Happy recycling,” Nora Gerber, the executive director of the UDO, said. “This is a free recycling program with the benefit of potentially free rewards, and it’s as simple as that.”
The city expanded the number ofhouses the bins were dropped off to 300 this year, as opposed to 200 houses in 2024 and 2025, Gerber said. The area in which the bins are at includes 11th Avenue to Lane Avenue, and east of High Street and Summit Street.
This past year, the Can Fairies collected 54,163 pounds of recycling from 200 houses, Gerber said.
It’s not just cans that the Can Fairies can collect – but any recyclable items, such as paper, metal cans and cups, cartons, glass, plastic bottles and containers and cardboard, according to the Can Fairy website.
Residents who have a Can Fairy can roll their bin to where their trash gets picked up. The city of Columbus will collect the recycling from the Can Fairies every Thursday, according to the website.
Gerber said that signing up for a Can Fairy gives Can Fairy owners the chance to win prizes based on their recycling; such as t-shirts, tote bags, reusable party cups and gift cards.
The program is meant to solve the two biggest problems when it comes to throwing cans on lawns; littering and the recyclable items ending up in the landfill, according to Tyler Lowry, the senior communications advisor for Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio, or SWACO.
“The idea is that we know a lot of recyclables are generated in the off-campus area,” Lowry said. “We also know that not all of those residences have curbside recycling. So, this is an opportunity to help make sure that those recyclables don’t become litter, which is the worst thing that could happen to it, and that they don’t go to the landfill, which is the second worst thing that could happen to it.”
Gerber said that the program started by focusing on home gamedays to see if it would be a success. Gerber and secure off-campus housing early others from the Can Fairy team performed a “proof of concept” in 2022, placing green cardboard boxes on 20 lawns for the eight home games that year to see if people would fill the box instead of littering.
“Home gamedays are when we see a lot of people throwing their cans on the lawn,” Gerber said. “One part of this was to change that little habit of stop throwing your can on the lawn, fill the box. Not the lawn, fill the bin.”
The program officially launched in 2023, providing Can Fairies to 100 houses in the university district.
The Can Fairy program received grants from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency and SWACO last year for the 2025-2026 year and the 2026-2027 year, allowing for more partnership and splitting up the roles between the non-profit organization and a government agency, Lowry said.
This change allowed for a transition point in the program last year, as the city will take on the collection and deployment side of the project because of these grants and collaboration, and the UDO will focus more on the reward side, Gerber said.
“This has always been the plan,” Gerber said. “To slowly transition to understand [that] there is a demand for recycling, and students know how to recycle and they want to recycle and we want to reward them for that. It’s been a slow process, but an impactful one.”
Sign-ups to request a Can Fairy for this year are closed, and the remainder of the fairies will be dropped off over the next few days, Gerber said.
