From Staff reports
Looking around campus, one thing stands out: Wow, that’s a lot of paper being consumed on a daily basis. Though there is a shift in trying to transition to electronic media, we cannot help the amount of paper that is being used on campus for various reasons. Photocopies, pamphlets, leaflets, posters, print-outs and class hand-outs add to this mounting problem and leave us wondering, what happens to all this paper?
As a university bustling with around 3,400 students on campus, in addition to faculty and staff, we consume a lot of soda, and not to mention water that comes mostly out of pretty little bottles made out of plastic. Yes, plastic – the synthetic material of sin man has created to destroy the Earth with. Where does it all go? Does it go into this abyss from where there is no return?
No, it does not. If it did, this wouldn’t be an issue. Unfortunately at Southeastern we don’t currently have a campus-wide recycling program set in place. Why, you might ask? Or why should we care?
This is a university, a place of higher education, where we are learning how to become better and more responsible citizens, so that when we go out into the big, wide world we don’t lose our heads and rain anarchy. As a place that teaches students to become more responsible, shouldn’t it be a place that sets a good example as well?
According to cleanair.org, we in American “throw away enough paper and plastic cups, forks, and spoons to circle the equator 300 times.”
Around 10 years ago some faculty members including Dr. Tim Patton, an associate professor in biological sciences, started the Green Club and tried to start a recycling program on campus. Unfortunately their outlet, a recycling company out of North Texas, went out of business and abruptly ended the program that was barely begun, according to Patton. “We no longer had any place to take our recycling,” he said.
This was certainly not the end to recycling on campus by any means. There were several smaller groups and attempts made over the years, but they all fell through. One example was the efforts by the Student Government Association to place recycling bin on campus. Though to our knowledge the only ones in existence on this campus are the bins in front of the Student Union cafeteria. These bins might exist, but no one seems to be aware of their purpose. Each and every day, students pass by these recycling bins and dispose of their recyclable plastic bottles and aluminum cans into the regular trash bins that are located just a few feet away. There are those that have made an attempt to dispose of a few bottles and cans into the respectable bins, but they are too few and far between.
Finally, as of last spring the Campus Sustainability Committee, which is in its second year of existence, said Patton, tackled their first project – recycling.
The committee was set up to deal with any issues related to campus sustainability, which include greening, recycling and/or safety issue, said Patton.
The Choctaw Nation recently opened a new recycling center here in Durant and the committee made an agreement with them to have a system in which they would collect recyclable materials on campus when needed.
Since it was only in the spring that this was set in place, a pilot program was started primarily in the biological sciences building and in Morrison, said Patton. Since then a few more buildings, including the Math and print shop, have shown in the program.
This is certainly a step up, but far from perfect. Four buildings out of the entire campus does not seem to amount to much – especially if the buildings that consume the most materials, such as the union with the plastic and the library and computer labs with the mounds of printed paper consume the most.