Category | Op Ed

What color is hypocrisy? KSU is less than green

Published on September 11, 2007 by The Sentinel

    Is KSU a Green Campus? I have recently had my
doubts. During the summer semester, as I was leaving campus from a
night
class, I witnessed a school employee emptying the trash. Not only was
he disposing of the garbage, but the recyclable materials were dumped
into the same bin.


 This means that everything ends up together in the same dumpster, and our campus is not recycling. 

    I have to wonder if this was out of laziness, or
does our campus not practice environmentally-friendly practices? I
immediately saw something wrong with this. I thought the reason for the
neatly separated recyclable receptacles placed around campus was to
make it easier to send off to the recycling facility. However, I guess
I was wrong.

    I know as students, sometimes we are lazy. I have
made the mistake, and I know others have too, of throwing aluminum
cans, bottles or paper into the wrong bin or into the trash. But, I do
not think that would be grounds to put all of the recyclable material
into the trash. In fact, the recycling company only requests you to
separate your plastic, aluminum, and glass. If it is not separated,
then there are other processes the recycling facility uses to remove
any mixed recyclables.

    If you do the math, the majority of students and
faculty will have a drink sometime during the day, whether it is from
an aluminum can or a plastic bottle. This means over 20,000 recyclables
are being thrown away everyday. Not to mention all of the paper that
goes into the garbage -which is rapidly filling the landfills- that
could be reused and recycled. 

    I checked online to view the local Kennesaw recycling
pick ups. Recyclables are picked up bi-weekly everywhere in the city
minus the KSU campus. Cobb County even takes green waste, (grass
clippings and timber) meaning that even our landscaping crew could
recycle to help avoid landfill fill up.

    So why exactly do we have the bins for recyclables if they are not being recycled?

    I have yet to have that question answered. 

    My only guess is that the school has to comply with
some kind of state regulation by placing the containers but there is no
agency forcing them to ensure that the recycling process is completed.

    As students, we should take action in the outlook of
our future. The landfills are quickly filling up and land is rapidly
disappearing, so it would be nice to slow that process and help both
the environment and our campus.