Recycling more than a trend for students

Every day landfills are filled with items that could be recycled, but there are students that are taking their own initiative to counteract this.

Bethany Abresch, a freshman nursing major, has bins set up in her room in Parkhurst Hall to collect recyclable items.

“After they stopped recycling regularly in Parkhurst, I would make a pile of my own and my friends (recyclables) to take home with me,” Abresch said.

This recycling program is now growing. Abresch plans on getting more bins to accommodate what she estimates to be about half of Parkhurst’s residents’ recycling.

“People usually just leave it outside of my door and I sort it later. My suitemate gets a lot of her friends recycling from other dorms as well,” Abresch said.

According to Abresch, her passion for recycling started in high school and she can’t stand to see anything thrown away if she can do something about it.

Other students, like sophomore environmental science major Hannah Sadowski and freshman creative writing and political science major Sarah Crile, collect recycling in their own residence hall rooms.

Even though GCSU does not have an official recycling service, the Environmental Science Club has white paper recycling bins in the Centennial Center, and various other buildings and departments on Main Campus.

President of the Environmental Science Club, junior Jeff Britain, said there are many different ways to recycle.

“A good tip is that just reusing items is just as good as recycling,” Brittain said. “Empty margarine containers and some sliced deli meat containers can be cleaned out and used as Tupperware. Get creative with it.”

Other organizations on campus, including Tri Beta and the Biological Honors Society, have set up bins in buildings like Herty for can and bottle recycling.

The Sustainability Council at GCSU is currently working on setting up a recycling program on campus and according to Dr. Doug Oetter it will be implemented over the summer.

The process has been an ongoing one, but currently the school is trying to get a contract with a waste management company so that they will pick up the recyclables when they pick up the trash.

Student volunteers who pick up the recycling bins in different buildings and bring it to a central location on campus will run this.

“This will be a chore, but since we are a community we have to do certain things to keep our community going,” Oetter said.

Oetter also hopes this will make students think about and examine all that they throw out and how this impacts the Earth.

According to Oetter, an easy way to reduce waste is not to drink bottled water, but to buy a reusable bottle for water.

“When you don’t look at what you throw away you start living like King Louis XIV, and the world can’t support people living like that anymore,” Oetter said.

Posted by Danielle Paluga on Apr 23 2010. Filed under Focus On. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry