Spring Break
DU increases recycling on campus
Naomi Parikh
Issue date: 12/5/08 Section: News
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"Of course we would like to see it higher, but we have to look at the situation realistically," Vince Petaccio, a sophomore biomedical engineering major and member of Drexel Green, said. "It can be quite a challenge to get people excited about recycling, and it's going to take some time before it really catches on like we'd like it to."
Petaccio called the almost 9 percent increase a "solid number."
"I think awareness will be the biggest way to have more students and faculty start recycling," Kyle Kephart, director and senior vice president of Student Life and Administrative Services, said. "Every year we have new students, so we have many opportunities to get the word out to them as well as the current student body simply through word of mouth."
The greatest detriments to the recycling movement are lack of convenience and an inability to notice a difference, according to Petaccio.
"People don't think about the fact that every single thing that they put into a trash can is going to sit in a landfill until it decomposes," he said.
Petaccio said not seeing the "direct effects" of recycling affects how little students recycle. He said students will recycle more if they can see why it is good to recycle and "not good to not recycle."
"If we really want recycling to catch on, we need to make it just as easy, if not easier, than using a trash can," Petaccio said. "The whole point is to get people to want to recycle. Simply telling people to do it won't produce any long-term results."
According to the report, Drexel bought 10 Big Belly solar-powered trash and recycling bins last May and placed them all throughout the main campus, including Buckley Green, Hagerty Library, Creese Student Center, and outside the freshman residence halls.
Kephart said he hopes to purchase a few more Big Belly containers early next year.
"So far, these containers have definitely helped increase the recycling activity on campus," Kephart said. "The older ones were starting to get dilapidated, so having these new ones at multiple locations has helped a lot."
Kephart also said he hopes to be able to talk to incoming students about recycling, possibly during orientations or new student days.
"We're still figuring out exactly when would be the best time to talk to them about recycling, but it would be good to get students thinking about it early on so they can also provide feedback," Kephart said.
Residential Living has also contributed, setting up recycling containers on each floor of the freshman residence halls, according to Bill Ling, Undergraduate Student Government Association Representative for Residential Living.
"We've set up containers on each floor, and the RAs can make sure they are maintained well," Ling, a pre-junior health sciences major, said. "For example, the students can put in requests for the bins to be emptied if they are too full."
Ling said RAs can also encourage recycling of things besides paper and cardboard.
"We can tell the students to also recycle things like ink cartridges and cell phones," Ling said. "The residence halls house so many students; they're a great place to promote these things."
Last year, Drexel participated in the Environmental Protection Agency's RecycleMania, a 10-week competition between campuses nationwide, in which each school gave a weekly report of its recycling of different materials, such as paper, cardboard and aluminum.
"We mainly participated last year because we didn't know what we could do, but we wanted to see where we stood," Kephart said.
Drexel won two EPA RecycleMania Awards: First place in Pennsylvania for "Targeted Materials - Corrugated Cardboard and Targeted Materials - Bottles and Cans for Partial Campuses" and ninth place in the country for "Waste Minimization for Partial Campuses."
According to the report, recycling goals for 2009 include competing in RecycleMania again, surveying classrooms and "common areas" for recycling and more marketing events to increase awareness around campus.
The report, which covers the goals for the 2008-2009 school year as well as what was accomplished in 2008, was produced by Kephart in conjunction with University Facilities.
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