Written by Samantha Holschbach
In conjunction with Harding’s escalating recycling efforts, the university started competing Jan. 17 against other universities in Recyclemania, a nationwide competition to reduce waste on campuses. Since the competition’s start, Harding has recycled more than 3.4 tons of material.
“This is a 10-week competition, and we kind of stuck our necks out there,” said Greg Tatera, director of Aramark’s building services and a leader on Harding’s Environmental Stewardship Committee, which met Tuesday to discuss Recyclemania and other environmental issues. “It’s a huge deal for universities. We have an opportunity for some bragging rights here.”
The competition entails Harding reporting recycling and trash data, which will be ranked against other universities to see which have the highest recycling rates, the largest amount of recyclables and the least amount of trash. Harding is participating alongside 603 other universities, including eight from Arkansas.
Sponsored by Keep America Beautiful, the Recyclemania program gives universities the option of competing in the Benchmark Division or the Competition Division. Harding chose to compete in the latter.
“Benchmarking is just testing the water to see how you’re doing,” Tatera said. “We went into the competition category, so we are competing against the other universities. With these [high recycling] numbers, we had to. It’s going to be a learning curve, but I think we needed to do it.”
As such, Harding students are encouraged to recycle as much reusable material as possible, especially until March 27, when the competition ends. Students can follow Harding’s progress at www.recyclemaniacs.org. Harding has recycled 171,630 pounds of material since July, a figure that has already smashed last school year’s total of about 154,000 pounds.
This year’s increase in recycling output is largely due to the growing availability of recycling bins. Over Christmas break more classroom recycling containers were added to major campus buildings. Only the Ganus Athletic Center, Stevens Art Center and part of the Pryor-England Science Center remain to be equipped with classroom containers.
“We have 257 classroom recycling containers out there — we can’t make it any easier than that,” Tatera said.
Additionally, bright green containers for depositing green to-go containers are available in every dorm as of last week. Harding’s financial department also recently worked out a deal in which campus departments can purchase 30 percent recycled paper in bulk for about the same price as non-recycled paper.
According to Tatera, if all departments commit to using 30 percent recycled paper over other counterparts, the savings in trees per year would be equivalent to the number of trees on campus.
“Just try to visualize the savings in the trees,” Tatera said. “That’s what it would equal.”
Moreover, since July, Harding has redistributed, reallocated or donated 664 asset items like furniture and equipment to needy recipients. This figure, too, has already surpassed last year’s total of 555 donated and redistributed items. Ultimately, Harding has saved $21,000 in the past 6.5 months due to its reducing, reusing and recycling ambitions.
Even as Harding’s recycling efforts continually rise, improvements can still be implemented, particularly in the university’s athletic venues like the Rhodes Field House, Ganus Athletic Center and First Security Stadium.
“In the Rhodes, we’re actually worse off now than we were a year ago with the amount of recycling we’re getting in the gym after a game,” Tatera said. “For the size of the gym, we have more containers available that are convenient for everyone to use—
there are more there than any place on campus for that size.”
Tatera said he believes the lack of recycling in the bleachers can be attributed to societal habits that must be corrected.
“As a society we have this mentality of stadiums, arenas, and theaters where we feel perfectly comfortable leaving things behind where we would never do that anywhere else,” Tatera said.
To remedy the situation at sporting events and to otherwise boost eco-activism, the Environmental Stewardship Committee’s Web site will debut within the next month, serving as a hub for Harding’s green activities. The site will display photos depicting environmentally sound activities on campus, recycling updates, a mission statement and other features. The committee hopes that the site will promote a campus environment in which reusing and reducing resources are commonplace.
“I think all these things should just come naturally to us, to all Christians really, because we want to preserve, we want to protect, we want to help the earth,” committee chairman Mike James said. “It’s just a good Christian perspective.”
