Recycling: You Can Help

Andrew Lentini spoke on Monday evening about the University of Georgia's efforts to reduce waste and promote recycling. His lecture, titled “Rethinking Recycling,” was an insider's take on what can be done to help educate people about the benefits of recycling.
Lentini is the recycling coordinator of UGA's Physical Plant. The Physical Plant is in place to maintain and operate UGA's physical facilities, grounds, and utilities. “We do cool stuff,” said Lentini, “Campus is doing an amazing job, whether you know it or not.”
The event was sponsored by the Honors Program Student Council at UGA. Free pizza and drinks were served to the 40 or so students who showed up at the Miller Learning Center. Although the room was only about half full, there was a feeling of closeness in the air. Everyone was attentive and truly interested in what Lentini had to say.
Lentini went into more specific facets of his job, such as putting together a monthly recycling report. He reported that last month on campus 42 percent of waste was recycled, leaving 52 percent to go to a landfill. The surprise was audible in the room when Lentini informed the audience that UGA produces enough trash every 30 days to fill up a line of dumpsters that reach from the arches all the way to Ramsey Center, which is over a mile from one end of campus to the other.
So what has the university done to move towards greener pastures? “We switched to green cleaning,” said Lentini. UGA replaced 350 varieties of normal, everyday cleaning products with three environmentally friendly products. There are also recycling receptacles all over campus to make it easier for students to recycle things like bottles, cans, and paper.
Lentini floored the audience once again when he began talking about the everyday things that no one thinks about being toxic. Some dryer sheets, for instance, have a warning label that reads “Do not touch.” He then proceeded to explain the differences between the numbers on the bottoms of plastic products. The number seven means “other.” That means that the chemicals included in the plastic could be harmful to your health. “The plates in some of the dining halls say seven,” said a woman from the audience.
The Physical Plant performs waste audits every so often of the waste from different buildings on campus. Lentini showed a video from a waste audit that showed this breakdown of waste: 15 percent was bottles and cans, five percent was organics (UGA currently does not have a process for recycling food waste.), 35 percent was paper, and 45 percent was actual waste that would need to be taken to landfill. The Ecology Club provides most of the volunteers for the program that performs these audits, but “if anyone would like to volunteer, feel free,” said Lentini.
Lentini then went on to get the audience involved in an activity. He used the audience's input to calculate an “ecological footprint” on the Web to show just how many resources the average person uses. To calculate yours, go to http://earthday.net/footprint/index.html. He also showed another video and gave links to various sites to learn more about going green. These sites included: The Story of Stuff, GoGreen UGA, and Athens-Clarke Recycling.
Lentini gave some very interesting information and made it sound easy to recycle. “Recycling is a big, long process,”said Lentini, “It's my job to make sure there's something there to pick up.”