Cartoon by Ailsa Alipusan
Southwestern College claims to be going green, but its lack of a recycle program has environmental-minded students seeing red. Finding a recycling bin on this campus is the equivalent to searching for the Holy Grail. Recycling containers are harder to find at SWC than affordable textbooks.
SWC’s recycling situation is embarrassing. Its current strategy is to have students lay recyclables on the ground near a trash can and wait for an industrious off-campus person with rubber gloves and a bulging plastic bag to pick them up. Effective, but ghetto. Carlos Ramirez and a group of environmentally-friendly students have taken it upon themselves to spearhead a drive to increase the number of campus waste containers for recyclables. Black boxes that have spontaneously appeared at SWC are the result of the work by Ramirez & Co.
Ramirez said it is his desire to start a permanent campaign for recycling. SWC administration, he said, provides the freedom to come up with ideas to promote recycling, but that is where assistance stops. SWC talks green but acts brown, paying lip service to serious recycling.
Two decades ago, in July 1993, SWC and the city of Chula Vista adopted an ordinance to reduce the volume of recyclable materials in local landfills. Specifically, the Southwestern Community College District Policy assigned this responsibility to the custodial supervisor. It is the supervisor’s duty to implement the district’s recycling program and initiatives. This includes the purchase, installation and maintenance of containers in appropriate locations, as well as scheduling the pick up of recycled materials.
Custodial Supervisor Ramsey Romero is in charge of collecting the paper waste on campus. He said he does not know who is responsible for picking up the glass, plastic and aluminum, but he did indicate an outside contractor was possibly collecting the waste.
Romero was not the only district employee who drew a blank when asked about recycling. District facilities employees said they knew about college policies for commercial and industrial waste, organic vegetation material and office paper collection, but they knew nothing about current practices for the recycling of cans and bottles.
Without a clear directive, SWC seems content on allowing visitors and students to collect this recyclable consumer waste each afternoon. Though this market-driven approach gets most of the cans and bottles to the recycler behind Ralph’s, relying on good Samaritans to fulfill the responsibilities of designated staff members is poor practice.
SWC needs to join the 21st century and initiate a meaningful recycling program. Virtually every other college and university in the United States has clearly-marked, easy-to-locate recycling bins. Our college’s absence of recycling contributes to a messy campus and sends the message to tens of thousands of students that recycling and our environment are not important.
Since its inception in 1993, the SWC Environmental/Natural Resources Policy has not been updated or implemented. Right now, on its 20th anniversary, would be a great time to create a viable recycling directive. Besides being the moral and responsible course of action, effective collection of recyclable materials can generate revenue for the campus. Encouraging students and clubs to assist the Associated Students’ Organization (ASO) can lead to increased proceeds that are desperately needed to fund worthy projects.
Concern about unsightly containers all over campus is a red herring. Some of the brightest and most talented artists in San Diego County attend classes here and the surfaces of the receptacles can be painted and used as canvases for artistic expression. The city of Chula Vista has very nice faux-stone trash receptacles at its parks and walkways. Why can’t SWC? Do we accept ghetto as granted?
Students on campus have the right idea and SWC administration should follow their lead. This campus needs to change and the buck passing needs to stop.
It is time to stop kicking the cans – and bottles – down the road.
