Reclaiming Recycling at Oxy

As many of my fellow classmates have noted in their blogs, the current recycling program at our college is uninspiring and unacceptable for any university, let alone one that claims its school colors to be black, orange and "green" on the front page of its website. As a member of the group working on raising awareness and improving recycling on our campus, I have been given an eye-opening lesson into the disfunction that presently is our on-campus recycling system. As others in my group have mentioned, many popular and perfectly recyclable items (all to-go containers, Green Bean plastic cups, etc) on campus are not accepted by Oxy's designated recycling company, SoCal Recycling. Not only does this company not recycle these items but if a bag of recycling contains to many of these types of materials, then they will simply throw the whole bag away. It is shameful and hypocritical that Oxy calls itself a "green oasis" in urban Los Angeles and yet neglects as basic a sustainability principle as recycling by selecting a bare-bones recycling partnership with a company that only takes CRV materials. We can and need to do better! Luckily there are many within our faculty, staff and student body who want to do the right thing and support a top-teir recycling program at our college. Both Housing and Facilities go above and beyond in their efforts to make our current broken system work as best they can. We need further student engagement in the disposal of our own personal waste and stronger leadership at the administrative level to guide our school toward the goal of environmental sustainability. We cannot simply rest on our school's historic progressive ideals and actions. We NEED a 21st-century recycling system at our school if Oxy is going to remain a leader in environmental advocacy and social justice.

waste and recyling (by alex)

(posted on behalf of alex)

Being a part of the recycling group, I paid special attention to the Disposal section. Everyone else has talked a lot about the book so I have decided to share a little story with you that relates to the book. I hope you enjoy:

I was having a nice Socratic dialogue with one of my friends a few weeks ago about recycling and how horrible Oxy’s program is. He shared the frustration with me but admitted that he neither recycled nor put his garbage in the bins. He simply leaves it out. My immediate reaction was, naturally, “wow, you’re a bad person” (I’m keeping this PG). But when he explained to me his reasoning, I found it to be very profound and interesting. He doesn’t recycle or throw away his trash because proper placement of discarded items is not the issue. For the most part (that is, excluding hippies like us), people have disposal services for sanitation and to preserve order. If we did not have these services, people would just throw trash on the street and we would have cities flooded with garbage (if you don’t believe me, read about the Five Points neighborhood in the early 19th century). We can agree, then, that these services are a good because we maintain (for the most part) clean, healthy, and orderly environments. The consequence of this, however, is that we simply put our trash in a bin and then it becomes someone else’s problem and no longer our responsibility. By hiding our trash in a bin, it gets taken to the landfill which is the area we have designated to pollute instead of our home. Leonard talks about the host of environmental problems there, including toxics seeping into the groundwater, the excess of methane gas, and the use of incinerators. But these are for the most part inconsequential for us. Once we put them in the bin they are out of sight, out of mind. Back to my friend, he pollutes the campus to counter this, to put the consequences of trash “in sight and in mind”. He sees his actions as a form of culture jamming, whereby someone sees the trash and so is forced, even if only for a second, to consider pollution and how trash is affecting their life.

Is he justified in doing this? You tell me. If only one person is doing it then it doesn’t make a whole lot of difference. But I think this story does force you to ask some questions about the production system as a whole that Leonard outlines in her book. Particularly, it asks us to reshape our perception of personal environmental responsibility. I hope this picks at your brain a little bit, and I hope that maybe we can one day figure out a way to solve this problem.

more thoughts on recycling (by alex)

(posted on behalf of alex)

I have been working with the recycling group to improve the Oxy’s recycling program. I’m sure you have read my other group members posts so I will try not to be too repetitive, but we can’t emphasize enough how regressive the system is here. The company that we have now, SoCal Recycling, exists as a for-profit company. Oxy uses them because their services are free. We throw things into the bin, they pick them up and sell them back for money. We do this because it is the easiest and cheapest solution. But, as we tend to see when it comes to environmental issues, that mentality is not quite appropriate. Because Oxy has taken no steps to educate us, the students, on their recycling policy, we continue to recycle the way we do at home, which at least where I’m from is just throwing everything into one bin and letting the company take care of it. Because most of us continue to do this at Oxy, SoCal is considering dropping us because it so much of what we attempt to recycle is to them only considered trash.
It has been my job to contact outside companies. When I spoke to SCR, they told me that they only take CRVs (and on a side note offered to pick up out paper recycling as long as we had a machine that would bale it. Lol). I spoke to the city’s official recycling company and they weren’t very helpful. Apparently LA has the best recycling program in the country, but the woman I talked to wasn’t sure if they could pick ours up or how much it would cost. They then sent us a list of other companies to look at without giving us a quote.
As you can see changing the recycling policy at Oxy is very challenging. While we have gotten the ball rolling, I plan to continue this project next semester and I hope some of you will join us. In the meantime, get the word out to your friends while we are getting the signs up. Hopefully when people find out how ridiculous it is they will start to voice their discontent.

Apathy

I feel that people are becoming more aware of the problems that discourage a sustainable evironment. This is a very frusturating aspect to making the world a better place for everyone. A lot of people just feel that it is not their responsiblity and take an apathetic stance toward recycling and other initiatives. If we could start small and take baby steps in the directions of sustainability we could accomplish a lot. Force feeding things like energy reduction and housing materials is not a effective way to get the point across. There needs to be a mass movement toward cooperation to accomplish sustainable development. A reduction in red tape politics at the local and national level would also increase the support for sustainable living. Jumping through hoops is the biggest obstacle for groups wanting change. Just facing the political side of this project posses a threatening barrier for many people wanting to contribute leading them to become apathetic toward the entire problem we all face.

School lighting

The project is going well. We are now in the process of collecting the data we need to submit our recommendation. To do this we will look at the amount of lumens are being used both in the classroom/offices and the hallways of Fowler Hall. We think that too much light is being used and we feel that if some of the light bulbs were removed from rooms and hallways the school could save a lot on electricity costs. As part of our side project we are laminating signs to be placed next to the computers to remind users to turn them off when not in use. Our plan is straight forward and could effectively save the school some serious cash.

Composting Details

Like Anna said, we have been working on purchasing a unit that would dehydrate most of our pre and post-consumer food waste. Because she gave a great overview of the project I will talk about some more specific aspects of what we have found out.

One thing that we have been interested in while researching the dehydrating unit is what type of capacity it has for compostable dishware. We thought it would be excellent if the machine could not only reduce our food waste, but also our waste from the Green Bean, the Cooler and the Marketplace for take home containers. Unfortunately, it looks like for each batch of food that is “cooked” or dehydrated, only 20% of it can be compostable dishware, such as the cups that we use in the Green Bean. Any type of corn-based silverware could not go in the machine because that would need to be chipped as it is almost completely dehydrated already. We would need to get another machine in order handle compostables, or research further about having compostables picked up, which would be a great idea for a project in later semesters.

After talking to Amy Munoz we realized there were some other things to take into consideration that we had not previously considered. She mentioned that finding space to put the machine could be problematic. Even though it is not that huge, Amy said that the marketplace is pretty much maxed out on space right now. If we cannot fit it in the dish room, moving pre and post consumer food waste is going to be more difficult if it has to go downstairs for example. She also had us think about how difficult this would be for the staff, she pointed out that so many people have been working for us for over ten years so re-training for a whole new system can be difficult. However, she said that if this is going to make things easier, than it will be much better received. Her ideas were really helpful in making us think about things we would not have otherwise. She was also very supportive and excited about the idea, which Anna and I found really promising.

Limitation and hopes for the future

Especially after coming from 6 months abroad, I have time and time again realized that the Oxy culture does not really promote the sustainability and diversity values that it often totes. Though huge steps have been made with plans for solar energy and local/organic foods offered in the marketplace, it is apparent to me that there is a general apathy among students and faculty overall. In the current context of economic hard times and financial crunch, the need to invest in cost-saving long term costs is important. On the other hand, creating a mechanism to "green" our campus's energy use is a bit futile, since energy use is increased with more students, more appliances per student and increased technology used in classrooms throughout disciplines. By shifting our focus to cost-saving and energy reduction projects, we can create significant change!

--Kathryn Griffith