For many St. Bonaventure students and community members, not many sights compare to the fall foliage and crystal clear skies of New York State’s Southern Tier.
The people who have made a living at the university have always taken pride in the land that they’ve called home. With that comes profound environmental concern, which ultimately plays a meaningful role in keeping St. Bonaventure beautiful.
“Environmental consciousness is important to the facilities department as well as the university,” said Jared Smith, the incumbent interim director of facilities operations.
His predecessor, Rob Hurlburt, retired last Friday.
“We also work with Aramark (dining services) to evaluate what we can do in the food service area,” Smith said. ”Facilities is also responsible for gathering and recycling other major on-campus commodities out of the waste stream, such as batteries (battery collection containers around campus), electronics (e-waste), tires, scrap metals, appliances and wooden pallets.”
As a professional responsibility, recycling at St. Bonaventure falls under the umbrella of Smith’s facilities staff. But in order for the process to run optimally, it must not only be a responsibility, but a priority, for everyone who occupies the campus and the surrounding town of Allegany.
“Every student, staff [and] administrator needs to have a role in recycling. Our campus is currently single stream. There is no separation. All recyclables are intermixed into the same container [labeled recycling]. It would be impractical for housekeeping/facilities staff to separate recyclable items from waste baskets,” said Smith.
While there are undoubtedly many students and people around the world who don’t take their responsibility to recycle seriously, there are just enough who do. St. Bonaventure senior marketing major and finance minor Patrick Danahy has gathered a nice indication of the overall mindset of his peers over the last three years.
“As a senior here at St. Bonaventure, I believe that the overall environmental awareness of students needs to be worked on,” said Danahy. “Students recycle on campus when it is convenient for them rather than taking action as a necessity because they do not know the total importance of recycling. With that being said, there are plenty of students who do in fact express their feelings towards environmental awareness with extreme passion, but the rest of the student body can definitely benefit from an increase in awareness.”
“We do see students using the recycling containers,” said Smith. “For the most part, students do a good job placing items such as cardboard in the recycling containers. There are instances of trash and recycling mixed together, which is why we all need to do our part and police ourselves.”
When students have been exposed to systems that allow them to separate their trash and recycling into separate places, they work well within it. However once they get back to their dorms, Gardens or Townhouse Apartments, the system seems to become breached.
“While the university is doing a great job encouraging students to recycle…their efforts for encouraging recycling in on-campus housing buildings are not nearly good enough,” said Danahy. “From the unorganized trash rooms in freshman dorms, to there only being one dumpster for the Garden Apartments to dispose both their garbage and recycling, the university needs to provide more for [the] students to understand that the school does encourage recycling.”
For students who wonder what happens to their disposables after they throw it in the dumpster, “The university contracts waste removal with a local company, Beichner Waste Services,” said Smith. “Regular waste (garbage) goes to a landfill and recyclables are taken to another location to be separated.”
While recycling is important at St. Bonaventure University, like anything, there is always room for improvement.
“I truly do believe that St. Bonaventure takes recycling very seriously and that they find it to be extremely important,” said Danahy. “I just think there is a lot to be done when it comes to improvements on both student awareness and on-campus living recycling organization.”
By Jared Leve, News Editor
levejl16@bonaventure.edu
