The ASMSU Sustainability Center seems carefully optimistic, if the latest MSU News feed is any indication. With recycling rates for the last few years finally being tallied, it looks as though MSU is recycling more and more each year — but only about 9 percent of waste generated on campus reaches a recycling bin. It wouldn’t be surprising if the Sustainability Center seeks to develop its programs to an unheralded density, and soon. After all, the program is looking to become a formal branch of the student government and with that, it follows, comes a deeper commitment to the campus.
But current programs might illustrate pitfalls that can frustrate the center’s future plans.
There’s an unexpected consequence to the ubiquity of the recycling bins distributed around campus. Their consistent presence — as urgent as the bright blue recycling insignias that grace their appearance may be — makes them an overlook-able fixture. Their imperative becomes everyday and mundane. Undoubtedly, seasoned students don’t give the bins a second glance as they rush across the plaza to class. Some have probably incorporated recycling into their everyday routine as a result, as the empty latte cup must be disposed somewhere along the way to class.
Others, though, may view and ignore recycling bins as they do trash cans, the boring iron landmarks that riddle campus. The message that recycling bins present to the campus is lost through constant wear, just as the message garbage bins present have been lost long ago. There’s no thought when one looks at a garbage bin — no consideration of alternatives, no examination of the culture that has birthed it.
MSU certainly doesn’t want the same thing to happen to recycling, which is most likely why the Sustainability Center has such an impeccably informative, engaging website. It’s also probably why it has tried to make itself noticeable in other ways.
At the same time, these other ways might swing the pendulum too far in the opposite direction. Trying to coerce a population to recycle through tallying benchmarks and affixing the message of recycling annual, “fun” events such as Move-In Day create a sense of uniqueness and glamour around recycling. There’s not the burden of everyday thoughtfulness that should be pinned to considerations such as garbage management.
Instead, by associating recycling with events gauged to unite a community for a few hours, there’s a risk of it becoming that much more disposable once the event is over and everyone has gone home.
The possibly-too-cynical message above is not to deflate the efforts of the sustainability corps of MSU; ASMSU Sustainability Center director Gretchen Hooker has reported an encouraging jump in recycling rates from the end of 2010 to the end of 2011, and the center’s website claims to have recycled over 700,000 pounds of material that would have otherwise gone to the landfill. Not bad, considering that the center has only been around since 2008.
If the Sustainability Center wishes to progress past their already generous public service, or if they wish to make recycling a more pervasive activity at MSU, it wouldn’t hurt to consider the idea that there’s a precarious balance between creating a monotony and creating an effective public attitude. Although the center has undoubtedly considered this, it’s time that students appreciate the difficult task laid before the office.
