In the spirit of recent sustainability efforts, Creighton’s Facilities Management has introduced a new program to recycle used writing utensils such as pens, dry-erase markers, mechanical pencils, markers and highlighters.

“The Pen/Pencil Recycle program does a lot toward making the campus populace more aware of sustainability efforts on campus and is another way to promote recycling,” said Lennis Pederson, the associate vice president and director of Facilities Management.

TerraCycle is the firm that handles the recycling. They have many other programs for which Creighton students and faculty could start collecting, but at this time Creighton is doing only this program one step at a time to determine if it will work.

Ed DuPree, the assistant director of Purchasing, explained that since the entire campus uses writing instruments, faculty and students will have no issue recycling them once in a while. If this succeeds, hopefully interest in collecting other recyclables will develop.

Each department on campus received a bag for pens and pencils. When the department collects half a bag of writing utensils, it can call Central Receiving to have the bag picked up. The university delivery service will send someone to stop by when there already is a delivery in the building; this eliminates extra trips and wasted gas. The next time a delivery is scheduled for its location, the department will receive an empty bag in exchange for the bag full of pens.

“Down the line, I would like to see collection bags in classroom buildings so the students have a place to recycle their used pens and markers,” said Peter Maas in Facilities Management.

There has yet to be a shipment of recycled writing instruments, but DuPree hopes there will be more in the future. He also finds it disappointing that there has not been a shipment yet since there seems to be an interest in sustainability on Creighton’s campus.

“The nice thing about this program is we do receive a small incentive to cover the costs associated with collecting the writing instruments,” DuPree said. “That is not always the case with many of

these programs.”

DuPree, Pederson and Maas all think it is difficult to get the word out about the recycling program, but getting involved as a participant requires only a little effort for huge results in return.

“I believe it is a good program with a lot of potential,” DuPree said. “The firm that we send the old pens to converts the plastic into other products. They call this ‘up-cycling’ rather than recycling.”

For more information, go to

http://www.terracycle.net