Faculty joins recycling effort

    Students of the Environmental Science Club will soon be presenting a proposal to school administrators outlining details of a sustainable program for recycling on campus.
    This recycling proposal is not the first, but comes after several attempts to implement similar programs on the campus in the past several years.             Other such programs were not sustainable over time and died off, mostly due to financial limitations. This new proposal, however, suggests that if money is spent the right way and in the right places, over time money will actually be saved—to the tune of up to $80,000 a year, according to Dr. Doug Oetter, the advisor for the Environmental Science Club and the chair for the Resources, Planning and Institutional Policy Committee (RPIPC).
    “The goal is to make it easy for people to recycle,” said Oetter.
    Currently, only small recycling operations localized to certain buildings are taking place, like the resident-initiated one in Foundation Hall and the one at The G.I.V.E. Center in Ennis Hall. The initial plan is to set-up a system of recycling in the residence halls, and collect evaluation data for later use in creating a larger plan for the whole campus. Justin Morgan, a junior environmental science major and the vice president of the Environmental Science Club, expressed that the club wants to make recycling accessible and easy for people campus-wide by bringing all the small operations together into a coordinated plan for the whole college.
    According to Oetter, there is a four-part equation that must be addressed when considering a sustainable plan for recycling—how will recyclable items be collected across campus, where will the collected items be stored in Milledgeville until they are transported to a professional recycling site, what professional site will the items be taken to in order to be redeemed for money, and how will this effect the campus as a result?
    The first part of the equation is answered with strategically placed recycling bins that hold items like used white paper, aluminum cans or newspaper, and are maintained by students earning money through the Federal Work-study Program.
   Secondly, a safe and reasonable location must be determined for space to be used as a storage unit for recyclable goods waiting to be transported to recycling markets in Macon, Dublin, Conyers or Athens where recyclable goods are redeemed for money.
    For the third part of the equation, the items must be sorted, organized and transported regularly to these markets. Most importantly a means of transportation needs to be arranged.
    Lastly, all these efforts will be evaluated to see just how much difference a recycling plan has made, how much money has been saved, and how much closer we truly are to being a “green campus.”
    Oetter, along with the RPIPC, is pushing for a certification that would label the GCSU campus as a “green campus.” To receive such a certification certain things like overall energy efficiency in lighting, computer usage, materials management, fertilizer usage, toxic materials management and efficiency in campus transportation methods are considered.
    The effort would contribute to up to $80,000 that could potentially be saved as a result of implementing this new recycling plan, and a new job could be created for someone who would maintain the program and keep it and other future “green campus” efforts sustainable, without letting them diminish or die off over time.
    “Our campus should be a role model to the community,” Oetter said. “I want us to be the greenest campus in Georgia.”
    To promote the new recycling proposal, the Environmental Science Club will be demonstrating on Wednesday, Oct. 17, at Front Campus, where students, faculty and staff can learn about the benefits and detriments of recycling. Also, they will host a speaker from a waste management facility in Macon, as well as a viewing of the movie “Trashed.”
    Do you live off campus and want to recycle, but don’t know where to start? Visit the Environmental Science Club’s website at www2.gcsu.edu/orgs/student/esc/ to find a link to the “Baldwin County Solid Waste Disposal & Recycling Guide,” where detailed information is listed on how and where you can recycle your items.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Oct 12 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