Green goals to improve campus - New recycling policies are initiated to make Homewood more environmentally friendly

Homewood had an admirable recycling rate of 29 percent in 2004, meaning a good amount of solid waste was recycled, but there is always room for improvement.

Recycling Coordinator Pat Moran says, "I do believe there is much that can be done to help educate the Hopkins population."

New Goals

Two new goals of the recycling office are to promote paper recycling in the dorms and to make the recycling effort more visible to students by having a better system of trash collection. Having two containers on the collection cart, one for recycling and one for trash, will make it easier for the custodians and show everyone else that the recycling is not being ignored.

Paul Furlong, President of Students for Environmental Action, says, "Some people see janitors picking up the trash and throwing it all in the same bin as the recycling. What usually happens is that there's a lot of trash mixed in with the recycling, so they just have to throw out that bag."

The new collection system may help improve this image. Moran says, "It'll help make people realize that we're serious about this. We actually care about recycling."

RAB Efforts

The Residential Advisory Board is also concerned about the minimal recycling in on-campus housing and is working to make recycling more accessible to students.

Community Advisor Pam Gomutputra says, "RAB is mapping all the trash cans around campus to see if the locations of these are efficient and convenient. Moreover, we are also going to undertake the task of educating students who live in the dorms to raise their awareness on the issue."

The recent purchase of fireproof paper recycling bins for Wolman and McCoy is part of the effort to promote paper recycling in the dorms. Due to the cost of these containers, students in the past had many more outlets for recycling bottles and cans than for paper. Furlong explains, "We couldn't put paper recycling on any of the floors because it's against the fire code. We had to order fireproof bins."

Off-campus housing

SEA hopes to establish recycling programs in off-campus housing as well, particularly in the Marylander, the Carlyle and the Broadview -- the large apartment buildings that house many students.

Furlong says, "None of them have recycling programs at all. It's going to be a lot of work to get that to happen but we're going to see what we can do."

Initiatives

Recycling on campus began as a student volunteer effort in 1990. In 1996, an administrative position was established to coordinate the program. SEA remains active in the recycling efforts and worked last year to increase the purchase of post-consumer recycled goods.

"We had a campaign to get a bunch of departments on campus to buy post-consumer recycled paper which was successful," Furlong says, "We got maybe about half of the departments on campus to buy recycled paper."

Aside from helping to change departmental policies, there are small steps that anyone can take to make a long-term difference. Think about the classic 4 R's: reduce, reuse, recycle and recover. Think about what sort of products you are buying and whether they can be reused or recycled. Also, use the outlets available on campus for recycling and avoid contaminating the recycling bins with trash.