Students rally around recycling

   Freshmen Zachary Gilbert and Morgan Eurek know how to chug—Gatorade that is.
    By the end of their first week of college, the two Foundation hall roommates drank their way through four cases of 24-pack Gatorade, only to find themselves with 96 plastic houseguests.
    “We didn’t want to just throw them away,” explains Gilbert, “but we didn’t know where to recycle them, so we just started our own recycling bin outside our door.”
    With no university provided recycling options, students and faculty are now voluntarily assuming responsibility for recycling efforts around the GCSU campus.
    Zachary Gilbert, an environmental science major, and Morgan Eurek, engineering major, set up three boxes and a garbage bin to collect their fellow resident’s plastic bottles, aluminum cans, glass and paper—all outside their room on the third floor of Foundation Hall. 
    “I think it’s a great idea,” said Amanda Gunter, complex director of Foundation Hall. “A lot of residents want to recycle anyways, so for (Gilbert and Eurek) to take the incentive on their own is wonderful.”
    After the first two days, the boxes were overflowing with bottles and cans, leaving Gilbert and Eurek scrambling to find a place to put them.
    Alan Thompson, who lives on the 3rd floor of Foundation, now recycles everyday. “Saves me a trip to the garbage,” Thompson says, “Every little bit counts, so might as well.”
    “We never expected so much positive feedback,” Eurek explains. “We just felt like it needed to be done.” Each week, Gilbert and Eurek haul a 33-gallon trash bag of plastic bottles and boxes full of cans, glass and paper to the Baldwin County Recycling Center on the corner of W. Hancock Street and Frank Bone Road.
    Gilbert and Eurek are not the only ones taking recycling into their own hands. Many small volunteer-run recycling programs are scattered through out GCSU department buildings.
    In the basement of Beeson Hall, faculty members recycle white paper, plastic bottles, aluminum cans, glass bottles and newspapers. Gregg Kaufman, director of the Coverdell Institute, is happy to be a part of the Beeson Hall recycling community.
    “I would love to see campus-wide recycling,” Kaufman said. “There is a theme at this campus—generous spirits concerned with making a difference.”
    Many organizations around campus have embarked on their own recycling projects: the environmental science club collects The New York Times and white paper for recycling; Tri Beta recycles aluminum cans for Habitat for Humanity; The Give Center collects used print cartridges. Yet these individual volunteer efforts are not able to undertake the responsibility for the volume of recyclables at a campus-wide level.
    “What we really need is a coordinated effort,” said Dr. Doug Oetter, who founded the GCSU Campus Energy Use & Conservation Task Force in March 2006. “If we are going to be a university educating the world and its future leaders, we need to invest in recycling and lead the way.”
    Many students wonder why GCSU, as a liberal arts college, does not have a campus-run recycling program. “(A recycling program) would only enrich the appeal of GCSU,” Noah DeWalt, a junior Liberal Studies major said, “(GCSU) promotes the expectations of Reason, Responsibility, and Respect, yet fails to live up to these convictions when it comes to recycling.”
    But once upon a time GCSU did have a campus-run recycling program. Former Director of Plant Operations, David Groseclose has seen the rise and fall of campus recycling in his 13 years at GCSU. “It’s been about eight or ten years since the last campus-wide recycling program,” Groseclose recalled. “The focus was mainly on white paper, and the university custodians collected, separated, and stored the paper in the Depot.”
    Once a month, a recycling vendor from Macon would pick up the barrels of recycled paper, which filled every inch of the Depot.
    But eventually, the recycling program deflated due to dollars.
    “After university budget reductions, GCSU did not have the resources or manpower to continue a campus-wide recycling program,” Groseclose explained.
    Bottom line, it simply costs more to recycle than to throw away.
“We seem to recycle the idea of recycling each year,” said Groseclose, who now is the interim director of Public Safety. “I would love to see recycling again on campus and hopefully someday the resources will be there.”
    Resources, or not—the demand for campus-wide recycling is here. Armed with a petition of 600+ signatures in favor of campus recycling, supporters hope to push for action through SGA and set up trial recycling programs in the residence halls.
“The biggest problems we are facing are how to collect the recyclables, where to store them, and finding markets who will take (the recyclables),”explained Dr. Oetter, who also serves as advisor to the environmental science club. “We need funding, manpower, and the drive to get it done.”
    Vice president of environmental science club, Justin Morgan hopes to bring more awareness to campus recycling this semester. “(The environmental science club) hopes to help educate the student body on how and why to be environmentally responsible,” Morgan said. “All majors are invited to get involved in the upcoming environmental science club events.”
    Back at Foundation Hall, Gilbert and Eurek have big plans for their cans.
    “We’re hoping to have recycling bins throughout (Foundation) before the end of October,” said Eurek.
    Foundation Hall Council plans to expand Gilbert and Eurek’s doorstep bin into a recycling competition between all four floors of Foundation Hall, with a pizza party for the floor who collects the most pounds of recyclables.
    As for hopes of a campus-wide recycling program, Gilbert and Eurek are keeping their fingers crossed— but are not waiting for GCSU to catch on.
    “You’ve got to start small,” Gilbert says. “People want to recycle and will take responsibility for (recycling) themselves—we just offer them a place to put it.” 

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Sep 21 2007. Filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry