By Scott Pohl, WKAR News
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wkar/local-wkar-967003.mp3
EAST LANSING, MI –
An ongoing promotional campaign aimed at students at Michigan State University encourages recycling with the phrase "Be Spartan Green."
With thousands of those students moving away from East Lansing this week, MSU and the city are jointly giving them one last chance to do that.
WKAR's Scott Pohl reports on this week's "Pack Up, Pitch In, Help Out" campaign.
AUDIO:
A huge recycling container sits outside Holmes Hall at Michigan State University this week, and it's filling up with carpeting and wood removed from dorm rooms here.
This stuff may look like trash to you, but Diane Barker sees some treasures here, too.
Barker is a sustainability officer with MSU's division of Residential and Hospitality Services. She's been at MSU for all 15 years of the "Pack Up, Pitch In, Help Out" campaigns during move-out week, and she says with a dorm this big, bins like this one fill up fast.
"We will empty a bin this size, and this is a 40-yard bin, probably two or three times outside a residence hall this size, and we're standing outside Holmes Hall right now, so the volume of students in this hall is around 1,100 people, and so there's a lot of material that comes out," Barker says. "And then what will happen is, this bin will go over to the MSU recycling and surplus area, and they will sort through to see what we can do with this material."
Lots of this carpeting can be reused somewhere. So can the wood. In fact, much of the material collected this week is bound for local charities instead of a landfill.
For instance, last year, one of those non-profits, the Volunteers of America, took 74,000 pounds of carpeting from this drive. They also gathered 6,000 pounds of food and 14,000 pounds of clothing.
The Hidden Treasures thrift store gets clothes, too. What they can't sell is shipped to the poor in third-world countries.
Barker says after its modest beginnings in the on-campus dorms, "Pack Up" now includes university-run apartments, too.
"We're providing the apartment dwellers some bags and some tags, so they can leave their donateables actually in their apartment, take their recyclables out to the recycling station, and just tag it, because their environment's a little bit different, and they have families and all that type of thing," Barker says. "We've made it a little bit different for them over in those areas, but University Village, University Apartments, Faculty Bricks, Cherry Lane are all doing it that way."
Along with big collection bins like the one outside Holmes Hall, smaller bins are in dorm lobbies to collect food, clothing, paper, and household items, all bound for local charities or the recycling bin rather than the trash heap.
It took a while, but city officials in East Lansing took the plunge three years ago, offering a drop-off site at the Hannah Community Center for students moving out of off-campus apartments.
Dave Smith is an environmental specialist for the city. He says move-out time used to mean handling a lot of material at the curb.
"A lot of those items are completely reusable, recyclable, besides the fact that it also costs the city," Smith says. "When we pick up that stuff at the curb and we take it to the landfill, there's a cost associated with that, so it's not only a reuse and recycling thing, but it also helps reduce our costs as well."
Smith says participation off-campus has grown just like it has on campus. Collections of electronics, for instance, have roughly tripled from one to three tons.
"Pack Up, Pitch In, Help Out" has been underway all week at Michigan State. The city of East Lansing's drop-off site at the Hannah Community Center is in operation from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. today and Friday.
The only charge for the East Lansing program is $7.50 for disposing of large items in poor condition. That's half the usual fee for bulk waste curbside disposal.
Smith cautions that only students showing an I.D. should drop materials off at the Hannah Center this week. Another program called Project Pride is coming up in June for year-round residents.