Written by Samantha Holschbach
During its two-year existence, Harding’s fledgling recycling program has saved thousands of pounds of salvageable material, resulting in positive results from the RecycleMania challenge between Jan. 17 and March 27. The challenge’s final tallies were released April 16.
“You can see from the rankings that we made a pretty good showing,” said Greg Tatera, Aramark’s director of building services and a member of Harding’s Environmental Stewardship Committee. “We’re actually beating University of Arkansas-Fayetteville in several categories. It’s not based necessarily on size; it’s based on the level of participation.”
RecycleMania is a nationwide competition aimed to reduce waste on campuses. The program promotes recycling via two methods: friendly rivalry between universities in the competition division, or competition isolated to a single university in the benchmark division. Harding participated in RecycleMania in the competition division alongside 222 other universities. Collectively, 603 universities participated in the program, including eight from Arkansas.
Roughly 59,000 pounds of material were recycled at Harding during the 10-week competition, with two weeks designated for trial recycling runs. Harding ranked 76 out of 223 schools in the recycled paper pounds-per-person category. The university also ranked 92 out of 223 competing schools in the recycled plastic and aluminum pounds-per-person category.
“That’s a phenomenal ranking for our first year out of the gate,” Tatera said. “We have a lot we can build on.”
At the same time, Tatera noted the RecycleMania results revealed that only 25 percent of students, faculty and staff on campus arerecycling.
“Over the eight-week period of the competition, collectively we are all averaging 39.25 pounds of general waste per person,” Tatera said. “That may not sound like a lot, but it’s actually quite a bit.”
Other southeastern universities like the University of Arkansas – Fayetteville and the University of West Florida have smaller per-person figures of general waste, 30.6 pounds and 36.8 pounds, respectively.
Harding has already exceeded its goal of recycling 250,000 pounds of material in the 2009-10 school year. As of Tuesday, 278,000 pounds have been recycled at Harding University and Harding Academy.
To boost the university’s collection of salvageable items during move-out, Tatera said donation stations will be installed in each dorm in coming weeks. Students are encouraged to start the move-out process early by recycling and donating the following items: clothing, household items, classroom/office supplies, cleaning supplies, personal care items and food.
Tatera said a major challenge during move-out involves students throwing out electronics when they need to be recycled.
“If there’s too large a percentage of electronics in the dumpster, when they go to dump it, they (city of Searcy) can refuse the entire shipment, send it back over here,” Tatera said. “We’ll have to get the electronics out and they will charge us again, a double fee, to empty it.”
Electronics denote anything with a circuit board, which includes even hair dryers and curling irons. Such items are banned from the general trash because the circuit boards contain lead, which may contaminate the water supply if not properly disposed of. Instead, students are asked to place electronics in designated boxes at dorm donation stations.
Beyond basic recycling, Harding continues to improve its carbon footprint through other means. During summer renovations, low-flow showerheads will replace dorm showerheads in need of replacement. Additionally, ceiling tiles will be recycled through Armstrong Ceiling Tile, and many building materials in general will be donated to Habitat for Humanity.
As Sears dorm undergoes renovations, 300 unneeded mattresses will be distributed to Habitat for Humanity, Searcy Children’s Home and Harding Graduate School of Religion.
Rain gauges have been installed on sections of Harding’s lawn watering system so that when it rains, the watering system does not activate.
Finally, Harding’s Physical Resource department recently purchased two vehicles configured to run, if desired, on compressed natural gas, a greener alternative to petroleum.
Though the vehicles are not currently operating on natural gas, director of physical resources Danny DeRamus said that may happen in time.
As eco-friendly changes continue to transform Harding’s campus, Tatera said that more participation in recycling would significantly enhance the process.
“There’s a phenomenal amount of stuff going out of here,” Tatera said. “We’re averaging about a ton a day right now of (recycled) material, and again, that’s at 25 percent of campus recycling. We take that up a couple of notches, and we’re going to be doing considerably more than that.”
