SGA to implement recycling program

The SGA Environmental Concerns Committee is in the process of implementing a comprehensive campus-wide recycling program, SGA Sen. Kendra Key said.

Key, a sophomore majoring in political science, said this is not the first student-led recycling initiative at the Capstone.

"If you see tri-bins around the Quad, or the red bins, those came from students trying to make a difference," she said. "The problem's always been that after the people that start it graduate, the work they did falls apart."

Key said the committee wants the administration to eventually adopt the program as a University initiative so it can become a sustainable part of the campus.

"We don't want [the recycling program] to go away just because we graduate," Key said.

Key said one of the first things the committee did was make sure all of the recycling bins already on campus were being recycled.

"A lot of them, like the tri-bins, were being put straight into the trash," she said. "So students who thought they were doing something good for the environment really weren't."

She said now most of the recycling bins on campus are recycled.

"A couple of them are being used for trash," she said. "The way to be sure is to look for the blue recycling bags in the bins."

With the old recycling plan, recycling was available in 54 of the 297 buildings on campus, including some academic buildings, some administrative buildings and no residence halls or athletics buildings.

She said they have established a recycling program specifically for home football games, which focuses on tailgating areas. Six hundred pounds of material have been recycled so far. But there is no recycling in Bryant-Denny Stadium, she said.

This is just one part of a pilot program that began in September and is slowly expanding to various parts of campus, said Vera Welch, SGA Environmental Concerns Committee president.

Blount Living Learning Center was the first residence hall to receive bins on Sept. 1, and Parker-Adams Hall had a pre-existing program that was reinstated later in the semester, Key said.

Welch said the Delta Zeta house on sorority row also implemented a recycling program. Three additional programs will begin on Nov. 1 in Harris Hall, Byrd Hall and the Riverside community. Students are responsible for sorting out plastics and papers into the bins, she said.

Eventually recycling bins will be in all residence halls, Welch said.

When it is fully implemented, the UA recycling program will include aluminum cans, all types of paper, some plastics, cardboard, newspapers, magazines and phonebooks, Welch said.

Welch and Key said they plan to compile all of the data from the trial period of the new recycling program and present it to Provost Judy Bonner toward the end of the semester.

Key said she is hopeful the University will accept the program as its own.

President Witt said he was unaware of the recycling committee's plans to have the University takeover their initiative.

"Whenever they do bring their information to us, I'm sure we'd be very supportive of their plans," Witt said.

Key said they have not set a date to talk to the administration yet. She said she hopes the progress that has begun on campus will continue and will be sustainable for years to come.

"There are seven billion people on this planet and each person generates four pounds of waste each day, but only one pound is recycled," she said. "The smallest efforts we make are immense."