Essay #3 Draft

Shameful Waste

Have you ever noticed how much garbage there is floating around in the wind? All that paper and plastic looks very unsightly in our beautiful state. Some communities are promoting more recycling but it’s difficult to get the average person to support the program. Although the University of Alaska Anchorage encourages paper recycling, it should offer to recycle cardboard and metal because it would help the environment, save money, and decrease waste going to the land fill.
I attended a meeting on the twentieth of March about sustainability. The class was primarily for building managers for the University of Alaska Anchorage campus. Some managers from the University Center and the Matanuska and Susitna College attended as well. The meeting was very interesting in regards to recycling. The university has paper recycling cans at various locations around the campus. They have a team of mostly student workers who will pick it up. They will take cardboard if it is broken down to lay flat on an on call basis.
As far as I know the only departments that do anything with scrap metal is the Welding department and the Auto Diesel department, of which I am part of. I am the building manager and a Tool Room Technician there. Some of my duties include dismantling and scraping vehicles when the department is finished with them. The auto and diesel department already has a scrap metal dumpster. The welding department has one as well.
The university has tried in the past to recycle plastics but it was not successful due to the plastic bottles had to be clean or rinsed out prior to being deposited. Also there were a lot of people who either didn’t know or didn’t care and put regular trash in the plastic receptacle. This became such a problem that they dropped the plastic recycling.
I think the University of Alaska Anchorage is on the right track in holding these meetings and educating people on the recycling process. I know I learned a lot. The most important thing would be to get people excited about recycling. I really don’t know how to get people more interested in recycling. It’s not a very interesting subject. Most people are just too lazy to take the time.
What I would propose is that the University of Alaska Anchorage will continue its education program on recycling and that a few departments around the campus would volunteer their time to collect both cardboard and metal. The auto diesel department already has a scrap metal dumpster and a forklift to load it with. We also have a flatbed truck that we use to haul it to Alaska Metals Recycling. I would be willing to have a collection site for any metal object in our area. I could then incorporate that scrap metal into our dumpster and haul it off. Metal prices vary greatly so I will not quote any here. It also depends on what kind of metal it is. It is even different between types of steel. Aluminum is currently the most valuable. Copper is worth considerably more that steel. I have recently hauled off what is referred to as shredder material, which is the least valuable and it was worth about twenty six dollars a ton. It doesn’t sound like much but it is better than putting it in the land fill. I’m sure the welding department would be able to assist in the scrap metal end of things as well. A flier with some contact information would be needed to get the word out. At least with the metal recycling, both the welding and auto diesel areas would be secure so trash shouldn’t be a problem.
The cardboard side of things could be a little trickier. We would probably need to get a couple of large cardboard recycling dumpsters to be placed in strategic places around the campus. The shop areas of auto diesel and facilities maintenance would be good places to start because of a high volume of supplies being shipped into them. One thing to think about when shopping, ask for paper bags instead of plastic. Paper bags are often already recycled and they can be recycled again. Plastic bags are usually not recycled and plastic requires petroleum products to make.