ISU Bengal

Issue date: 11/19/05 Section: News

Media Credit: Ron Tarver/Philadelphia Inquirer Carboard is piled up after being sorted by a machine at the Blue Mountain Recycling facility in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on February 22, 2005.

ISU students and faculty do the recycling but do not receive the dollar profit. The money instead goes to the FYI Belmont Care Center.

The FYI Belmont Care Center is a workshop for mentally disabled people that picks up all the recyclable at ISU and makes about $15,000 a year.

The recycling bins located all over campus are filled with white paper, colored paper, newspapers, plastic bottles and even cardboard. But once the janitors take the bins to one central location, the materials are no longer an ISU resource. ISU Students' Community Service Center Director Linda Burke says the disabled clients of the Belmont Care Center have need for this opportunity ISU provides.

"They have people there that need jobs. It works out perfectly," Burke said. "We coordinate with Belmont to make recycling happen at ISU."

Instead of making ISU money, Burke says ISU recycling creates employment and recycled products that all can benefit from.

"It creates jobs, new products," Burke said. "And we're the stewards."

Although ISU does not receive money for its recycling efforts, Burke says everybody benefits in some way or another.

"It saves all of us money," Burke said. "And it's the right thing to do. It's the responsible, ethical thing to do."

Burke says recycling does save money through tax dollars because the resources are reused and kept. Still, it is not about the dollars but instead the safe environment people are creating by recycling.

"It gets it out of the waste cells and used more ecologically safe," Burke said.

In order to help pay for itself, the cardboard revenue does come back to ISU. The cardboard money pays for the cardboard bailer located in the Holt Arena. The bailer is used to smash the cardboard into bundles to get shipped off. The S.A.V.E. Student Coordinator Shawn Miles says they received $84 in September on cardboard alone. But all this money goes toward the bailer.

"Huge volumes from the Student Union, Turner Hall and the Holt used to just go into the garbage. So we got the bailer," Miles said. "Now we pick up major venues that pay for the bailer."

Continued...

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