Unlike most career-defining ideas, Tara Pike’s came to her while rifling through a dumpster.

In the ’90s, Pike had abandoned her hopes of becoming a journalist after what she says was an aimless semester at the student newspaper, then called The Rebel Yell. Pike needed a mentor.

Her soul-searching just so happened to coincide with UNLV professor James Deacon’s recruitment efforts for the first crop of students who would establish a brand-new environmental studies major. Immediately, Pike felt at home — and the effects of her senior thesis project still reverberate around campus today.

“It was just creativity and sheer tenacity,” said Pike, 55, now the university’s recycling and sustainability coordinator. “It was being so stubborn and thinking there has to be a solution, we can find a way to get over this problem.”

Through the creation of the Rebel Recycling Program that just celebrated its 30th year, Pike has shed UNLV of a once-wasteful reputation. Care for the Earth is a mission she takes personally, as Pike later founded the All Friends Animal Sanctuary, where she has rescued goats, cows, chickens and other farm animals.

It’s easy to miss the campus recycling center, housed in a small dirt lot on the corner of Flamingo Road and University Center Drive. Somewhat unseen in a tucked-away part of the campus, the program’s impacts are immense.

“When I used to give presentations back in the 2000s, I’d say, ‘We used to do 2 tons a week. Now, we do 2 tons a day,’” Pike said. “Eventually, that became 4 tons a day.”

Environmental advocacy roots

Before settling on recycling as her primary focus, Pike had her hand in a wide range of environmental issues affecting Nevadans. In her undergraduate years, she founded Students Conscious of Protecting the Environment, or SCOPE.

The group led the charge to convert sections of campus grass to desert landscaping to conserve Lake Mead water — years before the valleywide push to do so began with the 1999 founding of the Southern Nevada Water Authority.

They succeeded, according to Pike, which is why thirsty grass no longer greets students at buildings like Flora Dungan Humanities or the engineering complex.

“UNLV is a campus in the desert; it should look like a campus in the desert,” Pike wrote in a 1994 Las Vegas Review-Journal letter to the editor. “It should be responsible.”

Pike’s will reached then-U.S. Sen. Harry Reid in 1992, when SCOPE began lobbying the Nevada delegation to support an even stronger Endangered Species Act as its funding was set to expire, she said. The law uses federal resources to prevent the extinction of species and their habitats, leading to complete rebounds of species like the bald eagle.

Reid met with SCOPE several times following the group’s protests along Maryland Parkway and even considered introducing a new version of the law, Pike said.

As Pike tells it, the momentum she worked so hard for began to fizzle out as SCOPE members started leaving UNLV.

“The thing with student groups is they’re only as strong as the people that are in them,” Pike said. “And then we all graduate.”

But Pike stuck around. After all, she had a recycling program to run.

A wild idea blossoms

Pike started laying the groundwork for Rebel Recycling in 1993, when she surveyed students about whether they would pay a recycling fee. By a 3-to-1 margin, the answer was a resounding yes.

Custodial staff used to empty recycling bins once a week, and they would fill up quickly, Pike said.

“It wasn’t flexible or responsive to the needs of the campus,” Pike said. “Back then, everything was printed: course catalogs, phone books and a lot of paper manuals for everything.”

With the help of Deacon, Pike went before the Board of Regents in 1995 to ask it to implement a $1 fee, per student, per semester. She graduated that year with a bachelor’s degree.

While it was chaos at the start, slowly the pieces began to fall into place.

Deacon helped Pike secure the current center that had been abandoned. The former research center for limnology, or the study of inland aquatic ecosystems, was full of scuba gear and had a trailer full of fish stored in formaldehyde and a pond in the back.

Though the student fee helped, for years at the beginning, Pike said she had to rely heavily on people who needed to satisfy court-ordered community service requirements. Today, it’s a funded part of campus.

Pike said the majority of the recycling budget — about $470,000 — comes from UNLV, with $60,000 generated by the student fee to cover the salaries of student workers.

Helen Neill, a professor of public policy and leadership who helped advise Pike on her thesis in the ’90s, said the integration into facilities management is proof that Pike has successfully propped up the program for longevity.

“That is a sign of institutional support,” Neill said. “So many programs at other places get started, but during the tough times, those are usually what go first.”

‘Rebels make it happen’

Brian Gillilan, who graduated from UNLV but still works with the recycling crews on a contract basis, said the center’s methods have evolved over the years, too.

“We would pick up the recycling and dump it all on like a huge table, and then people would sort it,” Gillilan said. “Now, we collect it and dump it in the other machine, and the public sorts it, too. It’s much easier.”

Gillilan is one of many students who have worked under Pike in the 30 years of the program, which has gained funding and permanent staff over the years as the university increased its financial backing.

The university’s sorted recycling eventually makes its way to the Southern Nevada Recycling Center in North Las Vegas.

After all of these years, Pike said she hopes that students realize the hard work she and her staff have put in.

Her program was well-intentioned from the start, she said, divorced from any thought of a return on investment. Recycling has just always been the right thing to do.

“Our motto is ‘Rebels make it happen,’” Pike said. “This program really encompasses that sentiment. We’ve been fighting an uphill battle for so long.”

Contact Alan Halaly at ahalaly@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AlanHalaly on X.