LINDSAY TUGGLE
Staff Writer
When Amy Walecka started at Pepperdine this year as a freshman, one thing struck her about the rooms and buildings of the university – she could not find any recycling bins.
“At my high school, they were everywhere,” Walecka said. “I wondered why at a university it wasn’t a bigger priority.”
Very few students know that Pepperdine does indeed have a recycling program – and it’s dirty.
According to Pepperdine Facilities Management and Planning, the university has a contract with a recycling company that collects and sorts the garbage collected on campus. This method, nicknamed “dirty recycling” by some, allows more than 40 percent of our waste to be recycled.
Many Pepperdine students, including junior Benita Goosby, don’t believe this system is as effective as it could be.
“Nobody gets paid enough to sort through a bunch of college kids’ trash,” Goosby said. “It seems like they would miss quite a bit.”
Junior Kristi Koon agrees that the system is most likely not completely successful, and instead offers up additional suggestions, including the placement of recycling containers in residence halls.
“It just makes more sense to have recycling receptacles placed around campus,” Koon said. “Besides, it would be a good habit for Pepperdine students to pick up. Someday we won’t have people to go through our trash and take out what is recyclable.”
Over the past few years, SGA committees have been created to research placing recycling bins in student housing, but no official change has been made.
Other students don’t believe that receptacles are necessarily the answer. Brigette Olmos-Arreola, a junior, said that putting recycling containers in the dorms would be a good addition to the current recycling program, but not a good alternate plan.
“I doubt it would be more effective than the way we do it now,” Olmos-Arreola said. “Pepperdine students don’t really care about recycling as much as say, UC Berkeley students do.”
Walecka would beg to differ. When she and her fellow residents in Pauley Hall heard of the way that the school recycled their trash, they decided to take their own steps to help make Pepperdine more environmentally friendly.
“We want to help out whoever has to sort through our trash,” Walecka said. “We’re starting by separating out cans and bottles to be recycled. Hopefully we can make their job a little easier.”
This semester, a Public Relations class led by adjunct professor Mike Furtney, will take even bigger steps to bring the recycling issue to light. The class, Public Relations Techniques and Campaigns, will attempt to increase awareness on serious environmental issues that face our world today and focus on the individual ability of every person to affect change.
“We want to bring awareness to climate change and the way we each individually affect the environment,” said junior Emily Simon, a member of the group. “It was something everyone in the class felt strongly about, so we decided to come together and focus our efforts on this issue.”
Class members said they hope to plan an awareness week to disperse information on the changing environment as well as hopefully host a screening of “An Inconvenient Truth,” Al Gore’s recent documentary of the effects of global warming, for convocation credit.
Angie Smith, a junior, said she hopes her class’ campaign will allow Pepperdine students to see how they individually can make a difference.
“We hope that people will see that every little thing they do to help the environment can improve the situation just a little,” Smith said. “Then, if we all come together in our efforts, the effects will be monumental.”
Simon also is optimistic about the way each personal change can help the cause as a whole.
“We want to promote good individual habits at Pepperdine by encouraging students to recycle themselves,” Simon said. “That way, they’re more likely to do it later on, when they don’t have some one doing it for them.”
Despite the differences in opinion and strategies of how Pepperdine students could recycle more effectively, most students agree on one thing— it is a dirty issue.
02-08-2007
