a student newspaper of the university of tulsa
february 13, 2017 issue 17 ~ volume 102
Michaela Flonard News Editor
The TU Sustainability Committee and students just want to get along. Yet their relationship, like many others, suffers from miscommunication and a lack of (student) effort. Despite the missed connections, the Sustainability Committee encourages students to “be true” to the recycling process.
graphic by Elias Brinkman
T
he University of Tulsa offers singlestream recycling, Terracycling and other material recycling for its students to use. Yet students do not take full advantage of the multiple programs offered by the university. Recently, the Students for Sustainability Committee did a waste audit as their first event in Recyclemania. The audit’s data was not available at time of printing. Data from 2016 Recyclemania competitions also help shed a light on recycling practices at TU. Recyclemania is an annual eight week competition between colleges and universities. Each week, participants report their recycling and trash collected and are then ranked in various categories such as cardboard and paper. In 2016, TU recycled 8.172 lbs per capita in Recyclemania, putting it 159th out of 269 schools. This data was based on cumulative recycling data from all eight weeks and is also available separated by type. For paper recycling, TU recycled 3.264 lbs per capita, putting it 41st out of 91 spots; in the cardboard category, 4.085lbs per capita was recycled, putting TU at 36th out of 97 spots. TU recycled 0.823 lbs per capita in the bottles and cans category, earning it a spot
at number 45 out of 81. During the eight weeks, 46,261 lbs of material were recycled. According to President of the Committee for Sustainability, Jason Grunin, much of the peak is from faculty participation, not necessarily increased student participation. A faulty-wide targeted email announces the competition each year, and as it occurs during spring break, employees have time to clean out. “What’s going to cause a student to accumulate a lot of stuff?” he added. Per year, Grunin estimates TU recycles about 200,000 lbs of material. This number varies per year, affected by factors like faculty cleaning out offices and student dedication. In addition, Grunin said “a lot more people are moving digital — there’s not as much paper ... That’s where we attribute it to.” According to Bobi Deere, the graduate assistant for the Committee for Sustainability, the trash company TU uses does sort for recyclables; however, “if you contaminate paper by putting it in the trash and getting stuff on it, you can’t recycle it. It’s better to recycle instead of throwing it in the trash and hoping they’ll recycle it.” The university also features Terracycling.
Tulsa recycling plant streamlines process to “feed Mr. Murph,” p 4
With locations in the Collins Fitness Center and John Mabee, the program relies on students monitoring bins where students can drop items that are often hard to recycle. At TU, Colgate oral care products, health and beauty products, e-waste, snack bags and writing utensils are collected to be sent off to the Terracycling company. This initiative is supposed to be student-led; however, participation waxes and wanes. Previously, sorority row had Terracycling, but the woman in charge graduated, Deere said, causing the program to die down in that part of campus. The locations were picked both for student interest in manning the stations and ease of student use. The gym, for instance, presented the possibility that students wouldn’t be carrying a lot off stuff and could take a used shampoo bottle with them. “I can’t have a Terracycling center a hundred places on campus, it’s just not feasible. We don’t have enough stuff,” Grunin said. Many students interviewed were not aware of this program. The committee has issues communicating programs and responsibilities to students. “We try with social media, we have student representatives on the sustainability committee, we have signs, we have posters, we have a Facebook group, we tried word of mouth, we tried getting the apartment organizations involved, because so many students live on campus,” Grunin said, but acknowledged that “really what we’ve seen being successful is word of mouth.” Deere noted that her group, the Students for Sustainability Committee, wasn’t allowed to do mass emails, and that digital signage and the event calendar often go unread. During orientation week, her group does try to train orientation leaders to discuss recycling with their groups, but she
was unsure of the success of the program. Throughout interviews with students and administration, three major issues were cited for lack of recycling: cultural norms, lack of awareness and apathy. Lindsey Boulden, president of Earth Matters, said, “It’s just something that we’ve become desensitized to to a certain extent. We live in such a consumer society, as soon as something isn’t usable anymore, we throw it away. The idea of recycling is just not something that’s ingrained in us as much as “consume and use.” To Deere, culture plays a role in the lack of awareness. “People from states that don’t recycle — Oklahoma being one of them — and people from countries that aren’t sustainable — and we have a lot of students from countries that aren’t sustainability minded — they just don’t know about it. Getting that info out to this is difficult to them as well.” Adil Hirano, an RA at John Mabee Hall, said “We just have to make them [students] more aware of the benefits of recycling and tell them, ‘hey this is a worthy cause, you don’t want to add more waste to landfills.’“ Hirano admitted the Terracycling program could be advertised better. The other major issue noted was an apathy towards recycling. Cody Brown said that “frequently around the commuter parking lot and around campus I see trash and plastic and broken beer bottles around frat row. It just gives me the impression about how full the trashcans are and how empty the recycling is that people don’t care or are somehow not aware.” To increase recycling, several students offered the idea of incentives or ease. “I think the primary contributor is laziness,” said Brown, “and the second thing is incentives. It’s easier to put it in the trash. We’re very reward based. If it wasn’t assigned as
See Recycling, p 5
Okla. voters broken-hearted; legislators not required to care? p 10