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Beginning last year, 2007, a committee effort first began when a group of eco-minded individuals came together at ASU Polytechnic and decided we needed a way for students to recycle on campus. That resulted in the Recycling committee of ASU Poly which yielded four new recycle bins that took the place of four trash bins formerly located in the Union. Former Student Affairs coordinator, Dawn Stark was keen enough on the idea to amend the duties of her student union workers to include monitoring and transporting of the recyclables. The recycling committee I was apart of quickly morphed into the Sustainability Committee by the spring of 2008. When we realized the scope of a campus wide recycling program was going to take much more effort and perseverance, that’s when they joined forces with GIOS to hire me, their sustainability coordinator. Since then I have continued to work on the implementation of a campus wide recycling program as well as spark the beginning a campus community garden project. There are many more sustainability projects in store for ASU Polytechnic so keep in touch with my blog to learn more about them as the progress.
To prove the need for a well rounded recycling program SANS, Student Act Now for Sutainability conducted a trash audit. We surveyed over 150lbs of a days worth of trash here on campus. With the help of custodial staff the different sites’ trash were collected and stored in one class room. It was there we dissected the contents and weighed every last bit. In the end, we found that over 38.5% of what was thrown away that day could have in fact been recycled. This means over $17,000.00 in savings for Facilities Management. Based on the reports I have read, and given that the number one item thrown away in a University setting is paper, I venture to say most Universities would yield similar results. So if you’re a college student reading this and your school does not currently have a recycling program- you could replicate this project to prove to your facilities that there is a huge need for a recycling program.
