Author: Clark Scally
Occidental College disappoints me. It’s not just
because of the shortage of left handed desks in Fowler or the lack of 24 hour burrito
deliveries and Republicans; it’s because there is a mass-murder in progress on
campus. The amount our campus wastes is simply murderous for the environment. The waste of trees, plastic and other materials that should not be
littered is a tragedy of the commons we need to wake up to. Occidental
simply does not recycle nearly as well as it should. We as a campus community have not yet stepped up to the plate to
protect our environment from our trash.
While there is a robust composting
program at Occidental for our food waste, my public high school had a much
better recycling program despite that most students left a significant amount of litter on the ground. After lunchtime it would be so bad that
hundreds of seagulls flocked in from miles away for their own lunchtime. At least all the
recycling bins were full to the brim when this happened. This is college. Occidental can
definitely do better than that. There should be a push for recycling bins to
outnumber trash bins, to make recycling an effortless, unconscious decision.
On assignment from the Chemistry department to heave
countless thousands of decades-old paper files into a dumpster, I couldn’t help
but feel like a murderer, a tree murderer, for wasting the pulp of our
planet’s ever shrinking supply of wood. Even after shredding confidential paper
records, I asked if it was possible to recycle even the shreds. After searching
the entirety of Norris Chemistry for large blue recycling bins, the answer was
an absolute “no.” All that paper was going to a landfill outside the greater
Los Angeles area, at greater cost to the taxpayer and the national fuel supply.
All of the L.A. County’s local landfills have long since been closed. This means
that municipal garbage has to go to a transfer station in South Gate to be
compacted before traveling at least another 90 miles to find a suitable
landfill that is not full or decommissioned. The fact that one of the buildings
on campus that uses a high tonnage of paper was not properly equipped to recycle its
waste was indicative of campus-wide shortcomings. Why one of the many recycling companies that collects from Occidental was not handling the Norris waste was disturbing. I could not find a suitable answer, other than outdated and inefficient bureaucracy that overlooked what was actually being recycled.
Occidental has another problem that could be fixed if we tried: a smoking habit that is dangerous for everything downstream. Every
time it rains I watch hundreds of cigarette butts wash into the storm drains
that eventually leads to the ocean. Those butts will contaminate what little water is left
in Los Angeles watersheds, rendering our groundwater not just unfit to drink,
but also unfit for marine life due to problems such as oxygen depletion. As the
butts travel away from campus, they will poison every inch of water they touch all
the way to the Pacific from the hundreds of chemical additives in each filter.
What disgusts me is the fact there aren’t enough ashtrays and disposals in
places where students actually smoke, especially near the residence halls. I
know it’s cool to nonchalantly flick a ‘grit on the ground and grind it under
your boot heel, but you know what else is cool? Respect and common courtesy. Flick
your butt into an ashtray instead, or stop smoking cigarettes with ammonia,
fiberglass, and chlorine in the filters (to name but a few additives).
It is disappointing to have a grand old
liberal arts college without adequate and convenient recycling available to its
students. Our college just needs help. Don’t get me
wrong, the college already does a great job handling the food waste from the
Marketplace with an efficient, successful system for handling compost,
recycling, and garbage. “Our compostable waste goes to American Organics in
Victorville about 85 miles from campus, where it is sorted for any contaminants
and then composted into great soil amendment products. Some of these
costs are supported by a grant from LA City,” Bruce Steele of Facilities
Management said. Occidental also gets income from a company called Sims
Recycling, which picks up the campus scrap metal and E-waste, and I greatly
admire that E-waste is handled so well, since it poses the greatest threat to
the environment, out of all the college’s waste. The college also gets income
from two other companies called SoCal Recycling and International Paper. In a
year, they collect over 100,000 pounds of paper, which can make over $5,000 in
deposits for the school, according to collection information provided by Steele. Most of this process is facilitated by grants from the
city and state to divert waste away from landfills. This is encouraging that so many
companies are working to collect campus recycling, thus not much has
to change on the business end of making Occidental more
eco-friendly.
One thing considerate students can do is be more aware and
make a conscious effort to remind each other that beer cans go in
the in blue bin (and one can make money off of them at a nickel each if
personally processed them at a local recycling center). Also, it turns out one can request
placement of recycle and trash bins from Facilities Management to any location
on campus. Steele is also eager to help protect the environment, and he
is very supportive to students who wish to do the same. “I do think convenience is a
factor in recycling, so identifying places where more containers are needed may
be necessary and would benefit the program,” he said. I know that Occidental students care about the environment, and it is time that we took more responsibility for our consumption and our waste, for the sake of Los Angeles and our home planet’s ability to sustain life. It is not hard to recycle, and we could make it even easier. Maybe one day we will recycle ten times the amount that we send to the landfill.
Clark Scally is a sophomore DWA major. He can be reached at scally@oxy.edu.
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