ASU students came together to show love for their planet on campus Thursday.
Students of ASU's Service Learning Environmental Sustainability Internship class celebrated America Recycles Day outside the Memorial Union in an effort to bring awareness to campus recycling.
"It seems like ASU students aren't aware of the effects of recycling," said Krista Norsworthy, a journalism junior and student in the class. "Most don't know where the bins are located or that we even have a recycling program at ASU. We wanted to show students the major importance of recycling and why they should think it is important too."
The class partnered with ASU Recycling in order to provide visual displays such as bales of plastics, cardboard and steel with posted environmental facts to help educate people about the problems that result from not recycling, Norsworthy said.
Volunteers also lined up to "man" the bins on campus to encourage students to recycle before being disbanded when it started to rain, she said.
"We decided displays were one of the best ways to reach out to people without being in their face about it," said interdisciplinary studies senior Ryne Klauer. "These are so a person can actually see where the paper thrown in recycling bins goes to and encourage them to continue. We really just want to offer people the easiest solution to recycle."
Currently there are about 1,000 recycling bins around campus, inside buildings with high traffic such as the Memorial Union, said Kerry Suson, program coordinator for the ASU Recycling program.
"We have had pretty good success with our program, but there is a large educational component that we are missing on our campus due to a lack of funding that isn't a problem with other universities," Suson said.
The program receives about $100,000 annually in funding, which is the same amount it had initially received in 1991 before the campus started growing exponentially, he said.
"We do a fairly good job at recycling here on campus, but we can definitely do a lot better," Suson said. "I think we all want to reduce the footprint we leave on this earth, and the first thing we can do is by reducing the number of materials we have to use to sustain the University."
Students involved in the event said they hoped this day could be the next step in making students more aware of environmental issues to make a more green-friendly campus.
"What's the point of being in college if we aren't willing to educate ourselves on the issues?" Norsworthy said. "The future is really in our hands, and if we don't do something — even little things like recycle — it will be our own fault if the world doesn't turn out how we planned."
Reach the reporter at kendall.wright@asu.edu.
