Dan Carver
The Paw Print
Every year United State citizens produce over 60 billion tons of plastic waste material. This accounts for 18 percent of the total volume of municipal waste in the United States. Surprisingly, a large amount of the plastic material that is thrown away can be reused or recycled. With this in mind, the EARTH group has been working over the past three years to create a recycling system at Adams State.
You have probably seen the recycling receptacles located around campus; there are many Habitat for Humanity boxes, multiple painted 55-gallon drums, and one blue receptacle in front of the ES building. There are also two trailers one of which is used to collect cardboard and one which contains bins for #1 and #2 plastics, paper, and steel cans. These trailers are located just north of the practice football field, right next to the challenge course. These trailers are picked up by the city and brought to the Alamosa recycling center, which is located just south of the railroad tracks on the west side of Ross Avenue.
Collecting the recycling on campus is not as straightforward as it may seem. The recyclables need to be sorted and relatively clean. In Alamosa, we can only recycle #1 and #2 plastics, cardboard, white paper, steel, and aluminum cans. We cannot recycle glass, #3-7 plastics, or chipboard (anything that looks and feels like a cereal box). The plastic caps found on food and drink containers cannot be recycled with the bottled they are attached to since the cap is made of a different plastic then the container. These caps can be brought to ASC Community Partnerships (corner of U.S. 160 and Edgemont Blvd), where they are then taken out of the Valley to be recycled.
The EARTH group established this system to encourage students to recycle. So please use the receptacles that are in place on campus. You can help out more by sorting and cleaning your own recyclable materials and bringing them to the city’s recycling center. We currently have only four students who collect, sort, and properly dispose of all the recyclable material disposed in the receptacles around campus. Please understand that this is a big job for four individuals, so be respectful and do not overfill, misuse, or alter any of the receptacles on campus.
Keep an eye on the Habitat for Humanity boxes during the next week. The recycling group will be brightening them up a bit in conjunction with EARTH week which starts April 12. The EARTH group will be hosting a number of events all of which can be found under the following link www.adams.edu/news/mar1027/mar1027.php The EARTH group is a composed of volunteers who have organized to help improve our campus. If you have any interests or ideas on how to help come to our next meeting on May 4 at noon in the Student Life Center.
What’s Been Said…