Spring Break
Residence halls go green
Alexia Lang
Issue date: 10/6/08 Section: News
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Beginning this semester, Oak and Cherry Street Residence Halls have recycling containers in every room.
After receiving many inquiries from student residents about making recycling a possibility, the department of Residential Life worked over the summer to gather funding and put together a plan of implementation, Eric Grospitch, director of Residential Life, said.
"It's what the students want," Grospitch said. "It's an important project because they worked together to help make it happen."
The recycling bins can be used for paper, plastic and aluminum. Currently, glass is not accepted because of the danger of it cutting a student if broken.
Students do not pay any extra to participate in the program. However, they are responsible for taking the recycling to the designated sorting areas in each building and sorting it.
"We didn't want to charge because we wanted to try to make it more inclusive," Grospitch said.
He also noted the funds are coming out of Residential Life's budget so students are in essence paying for the program.
Purchasing the recycling bins and implementing the program cost approximately $1,500, according to Grospitch.
Recycling pick-up costs approximately $100 per week.
Twenty-one out of the 95 buildings associated with UMKC now have some form of a recycling program, Kaye Johnston, coordinator of Campus Facilities Management, said.
"There are 74-buildings with 2.5 million square feet that we need to expand to in order to be campus-wide with the same level of recycling in all buildings," Johnston said. "We basically need 5000 recycling bins and 2500 signs and stickers to do that, plus a dedicated recycling truck. Right at $138,000 with $98,000 for bins and $40,000 for a CNG box truck."
Johnston just wrote and submitted a grant that would provide the money to meet the goal of university-wide recycling.
She said, "Right now we are very hopeful that our grant will be funded for 2009 by MARC SWMD so we will have a full infrastructure to go campus-wide with our program."
alang@unews.com
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