CU to celebrate 30 years of recyling with ‘America Recylces Day’
This Wednesday, CU will celebrate America Recycles Day and 30 years of recycling with an awards presentation and a tour of recycling facilities on campus.
America Recycles Day is a nationwide event held every Nov. 15. It encourages Americans to recycle and buy recycled products. A national contest is being held this year; the grand prize will be a all-expenses paid Alaskan cruise for two people.
Staff members from the Environmental Center will have a table set up on the Fine Arts lawn, entering people who pledge to increase their recycling habits into the contest.
America Recycles Day “will create awareness nationwide and make people pay more attention to recycling,” said Dan Baril, recycling program manager for the E-Center. Wednesday afternoon the E-Center will give a tour of the Campus Resource Recovery Systems from 2-4 p.m. The tour is open to anyone interested and begins at the E-Center in UMC room 355.
Wednesday evening there will be a reception, presentation and awards ceremony honoring 30 years of recycling at CU and the people who have shaped the program over the years.
In 1976, CU began a recycling program that at the time was revolutionary and has become one of the nation’s leading campus recycling programs.
“It was a student-driven program and (they) have been the life and blood of the organization,” Baril said. “It has evolved ever since to the program we have today.”
The E-Center depends on student volunteers and employees to help promote recycling, collect materials and operate the campus recycling facility.
“People don’t realize that (recycling) isn’t just a matter of not filling our landfills but conserving resources,” said Sierra Brashear, a senior environmental studies major who is a part of the Recycling Outreach Team with the E-Center.
Brashear works to promote recycling on campus mainly through art displays. This Wednesday, there will be a 250-square foot cage of recyclable goods that represents the amount of trash that CU diverts from landfills each day. There will also be art on display made from recycled goods. The Outreach Team was also responsible for the forest of paper mach
