The first week of school featured the usual traditions of move-in, syllabi explanations and the annual foam party. However, this year something new welcomed students: royal blue recycling bins.
The personal bins found in every dorm room make up a vital part of Creighton University’s new single-stream recycling program. The institution of a campus-wide recycling program, when only a patchwork of student-run drives existed before, would not have been possible without the cooperation of three groups on campus.
First, the Creighton Students Union had set a goal for a new recycling program over a year ago. Just last year, CSU representatives joined a university committee to make sure students could participate in a new recycling program.
The CSU executive board made strategic decisions to ensure the success of the program by making it student-friendly.
The program is single-stream, which means students do not need to labor over separating their recycling into paper and plastic.
In addition, every dorm room and office will have a personal bin, allowing students and staff to easily transfer their recycling to the communal collection units. As of yet, only underclassmen resident halls, Wareham Court and the Harper Center feature recycling. Other buildings will be phased as the year progresses.
Second, Residence Life picked up the bill for the some 1,200 personal bins in residence halls. It may be too easy talking about the need to go green and save the environment, but Residence Life laid down the money to make sure the university’s practices matched what the university preached.
While it’s easy to preach the need to go green and save the environment, it is easy to forget that innovative programs need funding to operate.
Third, facilities management took up the extra work that comes with collecting the communal bins in residence halls and other buildings throughout campus. In addition, custodial workers will only collect recycle bins in offices. Trash cans will have to be emptied personally.
The creation of Creighton’s recycling program is a significant step toward living out the Jesuit value of forming and educating agents of change and will be an important accomplishment of the White administration.
With all the praise of the new program, there is still more work to be done. CSU should continue partnering with Residence Life and Facilities Management to provide education about the need for and benefits of recycling. In addition, CSU may want to compete in RecycleMania, a competition among universities to recycle.
Most importantly, students, faculty and staff need to make personal commitments to use these tools provided by these various organizations. When the average college student produces 640 pounds of waste each year, our use of the new program will cut back on landfills and help preserve natural resources.
If we, as a community, take advantage of these new programs, we will slowly change Creighton to leave less impact on the environment and more impact on our personal habits, making us and our campus a little more green.