Penn State Recycles (I Bleed Blue and White… And Green)

Dear Penn State Recycles Program Facility Coordinators,

To start I would like to applaud your efforts in working to encourage recycling among Penn State students. As you know, we Nittany Lions take pride in our “Penn State Recycles Program” for the benefits it brings to the community, environment, and University. But I feel that the amount of people who recycle is too small. Being an active recycler, I am appalled by the fact that Pollock dormitories do not have recycling bins on every floor, while other dorms, like East Halls do. I believe this has to do with their accessibility to recycling resources. I believe that they do recycle, not because they do not want to, but because it’s too inconvenient for them. And not only is it inconvenient to recycle, but it also inconvenient to compost. They are inconvenient in that no one knows where the compositing bins are. We see signs about them all over the HUB student center stating what we can and cannot compost, yet the sign does not tell us where the composting bin is actually located. I even checked the Penn State’s Composting Program page online and couldn’t find any information about where to find these mysterious bins. I want to make it more convenient for students to recycle by adding bins in more accessible places to that recycling does not seem like a “chore,” but rather a beneficial life change.

I live on the second floor of Hartranft Hall in Pollock Hall. Every night, my roommate and I eat dinner with some friends on the first floor. It was a typical night. We went downstairs to grab the rest of our usual dinner group to head over to the dining commons. All was going smoothly until one of the boys said they had to throw some trash out first, so we waited for him. But I noticed that he threw everything out, not bothering to separate recyclables. When I mentioned it to him, he said it was too complicated. This sparked a heated debate between us all. Julia, who lives on the sixth floor, berated the first floor boys for being lazy, arguing that if she could it, so could they. Yet her roommate does not recycle. Luckily, Julia is willing to recycle both of their garbage each week. The boys debated back that “it’s just one room,” and that “it wouldn’t make much of a difference.” I then countered, “but what if everyone had that mentality?” No one would be recycling!

Even though I recycle, I guess I can understand why my friends do not. The problem is, there are only a few recycle bins in dormitories, usually located somewhere on the ground floor. It would be a lot easier for us to recycle if there was a set of bins for each floor. My friends on the top floor of the building find it too much of a hassle to take the elevator down to the ground floor and then back up against just to put a little cardboard box in the corner of the rec room of our building. Instead, they simply crunch of the tattered pizza box and throw it into the garbage can conveniently located in the hall outside of their room. For them, this is easier than walking downstairs.

When I went to visit my friend at Pitt for her birthday, we threw out the garbage from her birthday dinner right outside of her room. There was a recycling room conveniently located in the center of the hall so that it was literally ‘right outside” everybody’s room. The dorms were designed so that students could simply open their doors and walk straight into the recycling room from any of its four entrances. Not only that, but these recycling rooms are situated on every floor. Each room contains an array of different trash bins for glass, paper, plastic, etc. I was incredibly impressed! Though Pitt is thought to be a “dirty city” it is actually very “green and efficient.” The city of Pittsburgh actually requires all of its residents to recycle. Not only does it “help the City to recover valuable resources and save energy, but it also generates revenue and saves on landfill costs” (Recycling).

Recycling helps the environment by reducing waste and material so that they can be reused, lowering pollution from factories that are created to produce them. Overall recycling also can help prevent us from depleting all of our resources. And composing helps the environment by reducing the amount of waste being thrown into landfills that can be broken down in an organic, biodegradable way, which can then be used as fertilizer or soil in the future.

Currently, Penn State recycles 44% of its waste streams, or 4,868 tons of materials (Program). But if we can increase the number of bins and conveniences of composting bins, I know that number will increase! Not only is it beneficial for the program, but also for the students, campus, and environment. Recycling and composting is a good habit for students to have. On top of that, the new behavior increases greener behavior, which is overall, incredibly beneficial for the environment.

Some may argue that adding more recycling and composting bins will be a costly change, but the Penn State Recycling program website states that “despite the increased programmatic costs, the economics of our recycling program continue to benefit the University through cost avoidance. We will continue to look for ways to increase our recycling efforts if the nominal cost of expanding the program can be justified on an economic basis” (Program). So regardless of whether or not a few extra bins here and there change the cost, it is still overall more beneficial.

If the only concern is to save money, there is another alternative that I can propose. Instead of buying more bins, we could simply take the bins that we already have and alter the way they are distributed around campus. In addition, we could add a set of clear directions that allows students to locate these “mysterious compost bins” that we can never find. As students, we spend more time eating and producing more waste in our dorm rooms than in actual classrooms. Yet I always see recycling bins placed in each of my classrooms and hallways of class buildings. Most hallways even has two sets of bins on each wide. Why can’t we just take one of those extra sets of bins and put it into a dormitory instead? This way, the University would not be spending any extra money. It would simply be rearranging the set up and delegation of the recycling program. Recycling would be more convenient and less of a hassle, making it easier for us to “go green.”

This little change can domino into an even bigger change. If we can implement this simple change successfully, we can make it into something bigger. This change will benefit the future of Penn State, making it greener for future students as well as create a good habit amongst current students who will then go on to teach these “greener practices” to their families and children. Please consider this alternative to an already very successful program. If we can make it even more successful, it will benefit much more than just our campus. I thank you for taking the time to read my proposition.

If we can implant this convent practice of recycling, we can help the environment we live in as these green dieas grow. And then we can proudly say that we bleed not only blue and white, but also green!

Best regards,

Jessica Yeh

#proposal #recycling #environment #pennstate