At Lindenwood University, we have several trash outlets, both outdoor and indoor, across the indoor parts of campus. As for recycling, we have a few in certain buildings across the campus, but still not many. And as far as the outdoor areas of campus, we hardly have any recycling outlets at all. Why is this important? Why should we be concerned? Lindenwood University boasts a visually appealing campus and is fortunate to be located in the town of St. Charles. By not having as many recycling outlets, Lindenwood is putting its campus nature at risk by increasing the chances of pollution at Lindenwood and possibly St. Charles as a whole, and landfills overflowing in the area, which can affect our air on campus and the same with our waters on campus for indoor and outdoor use. And particularly for our indoor waters, that would mean not as clean water fountains, sinks, and restrooms.
Recycling also allows us to create new items without extracting new materials, including not having to cut down more trees to make paper, or using more fossil fuels such as crude oil or natural gas to make plastic. When natural gases are leaked, it puts the roots of plants at risk of suffocation, causing plants to dehydrate and possibly die. St. Charles, Missouri, has several parks and nature areas, including those on Lindenwood’s campus.
But Lindenwood not having as many recycling outlets, and Lindenwood not getting as much recycling as they could in general, the Lindenwood campus and the St. Charles’ environment as a whole isn’t as healthy as it could be. It affects nature as a whole, as well as animals, and the same with us. If Lindenwood can add more recycling outlets, recycling on campus can increase, as can the health of our campus’s environment, and us.
In addition, as college students preparing to have full-time jobs, as well as eventually live on our own, we need to get into good habits of recycling and understand how it helps nature, and how it helps people as a whole, including ourselves.
Neglecting to recycle and instead throwing away industrial waste can cause pollution when the harmful chemicals from recyclable materials thrown away seep into the soil, causing cancerous cells to form in the dirt or water. This can include Lindenwood’s grounds and waters. Those chemicals can enter our atmosphere from overflowing landfills, and those landfills lead to the destruction of natural habitats.
Whereas when you do recycle, even if it’s only a little bit, you are reducing the need for extracting, refining, and processing raw materials, and overall reducing the impact of resource extraction on the environment. The Environmental Protection Agency notes that recycling one ton of aluminum can save up to 8 tons of bauxite ore and 14,000 kilowatt-hours of energy.
If Lindenwood had more recycling outlets, St. Charles could save loads of money, the plants and waterways on campus would be healthier, the air on campus would be fresher, and the food and water would likely be cleaner. Students would also better understand the importance of recycling and helping the environment, which would follow them in their lives, and would both teach them responsibility and provide for a healthier environment and, eventually, healthier lives for themselves.
This year, Lindenwood University introduced a new environmental science organization called Sustainabilitree. Most members of the organization just call it the tree for short, but recycling is a huge factor in what the organization is striving for in looking to create a cleaner and healthier campus.
“It isn’t only recycling, it’s pretty much you do recycling; you do upcycling; sustainable efforts, as in education of what is sustainability; what branches, all the puns intended, all the branches of it, because there’s arts and crafts of cycling that folks are really keen on,” Sustainabilitree President Kimberly Karlsson said.
A few years back once had a bigger recycling system. However, due to food that was left in bags and boxes as they went into the recycling, the University was fined tens of thousands of dollars due to the contamination in the recycling.
Lindenwood has cut back on many recycling outlets since then. Karlsson has spoken with Director of Operations for Food Services and Student Affairs Nancy Tinker on possibilities for bringing a new and improved expanded recycling system back to Lindenwood, and Karlsson and Sustainabilitree have been working to develop solutions for that recycling system to potentially work out.
“Sustainabilitree has been brainstorming what could be more realistic, what could be some options, and one of the options I was thinking about was we have a recycling team, like a party that is actually trained, and equipped because safety is paramount, you don’t want contaminants all over or what not, you want to make sure everything’s clean, so we don’t get fines so we can have volunteer hours dedicated to a trained team of students coming and bringing their goods they want to sort, and we can disinfect them,” Karlsson said.
“I don’t know by what means, that’s more of the logistics part to think about. But we can have a team earn their service hours by sorting the recycling. That would prevent the fees from gutton recycling to begin with. For more of the efforts, too, Spellman, for example, has franchises including Qdoba and Pizza Hut, things kind of outside the scope. We can’t tell them what recyclable utensils they can use; they have their own contracts. But like Evans, we could totally do something with them. Maybe we could coordinate with Sodexo. I’d have to meet with Mr. Robert Marlow and see what we can do. But it’s all meetings and information compilation right now. Especially juggling the tree’s current events and double majoring, so I’m like, yeah, I got to coordinate with the team a lot.”
According to sophomore ecology and evolutionary science major Morgan Felber, she feels Lindenwood could really enhance recycling on campus by adding brightly colored bins, including signs of things that can or can’t be put into them. Felber also feels that, for precaution, there can also be trash and recycling bins next to each other throughout campus for groups of students going through items no longer of use, and sort trash from recycling when needed, and possibly offer service hours for doing so.
“The recycling would absolutely be great to keep things clean,” Felber said. “I hate walking around anywhere and seeing something that could have easily been reused or recycled. Not only that, using the waste for something else can repurpose it and make it more useful, including how I tend to turn plastic into filament for my 3D Printer.”
Tin cans, for example, can make around five to 10 cents back a can. College students can go through a lot of soda and energy drinks, too. That much recycling can be a major difference maker. A lot of money saved from recycling could come back to delegating it towards operations, student organizations, and things as a whole from the university.
Lindenwood gets a lot of paper waste, and more could be done with it. Karlsson, Felber, and Sustainabilitree members as a whole have even started making floats and things in general out of paper scraps. They’ve also used other recyclables, including old books and old encyclopedias, and material as a whole.
The team and I can have first-hand experience on how to decontaminate these things, what kind of plastics we actually can recycle because not all plastic is recyclable; there’s like, I think it’s code two, there’s like a little triangle with arrows on it on the bottom of things. Some of them have a two, some of them have a five; it’s what kind of polymer-grade it is,” Karlsson said. “Some plastics can’t be recycled, some can. Otherwise, we could upcycle. Do some good stuff. I think it would have a great impact both in the educational aspect and the financial aspect. Plus, you feel good doing it. I’d rather see it go to you doing something, breathing in some life instead of going in the trash heap. That’s what I’m hoping we can do, I’m hoping we can take the steps in that direction.”
Since Sustainabilitree became a Lindenwood organization at the start of the school year, they have been striving to educate people on ways to take their plastic waste and turn it into something they can use, in addition to monitoring how much waste is on campus, and outlets to encourage people to reduce that.
Sustainabilitree has especially been emphasized to students on campus that, in addition to how recycling can reduce waste in landfills, in return, it is also very good for people with more sensitive immune systems and who are more sensitive to air quality. Sustainabilitree has not only been looking to educate Lindenwood students on these things for their time at LU, but also for the foreseeable future.
“I do think there also should be accountability for students caught littering, simply because it really is not that difficult to hold onto your trash until you find a trash can or recycle bin. I don’t think it should be anything outlandish, but just enough to show that there are consequences to some things simply because it’s the same way in the real world, too. We only live for so long, and taking care of the earth like we take care of ourselves can go a long way for future generations.”
Waste is an expensive and frequently unavoidable result of human activity. On campus, it can be produced in our dorms, houses, classrooms, and buildings. How we choose to manage and dispose of waste affects the air, land, and water that humans, animals, and plants depend on for life. The primary goal is to reduce or prevent waste and pollution in the first place.
The 3 R’s — reduce, reuse, and recycle help you and your community save money and the environment, including your community having a healthier campus nature, and the same with healthier people.
St. Charles County has consistently ranked as one of Missouri’s healthiest counties, scoring high on health outcomes and health factors, including the physical environment. The city of St. Charles itself boasts several parks and access to nature; this includes all of the nature on Lindenwood University’s campus. St. Charles County, however, has struggled to combat groundwater contamination, including with ongoing issues of litter in local creeks and the Missouri River, affecting local ecosystems.
This can include the creeks at Lindenwood, as well as the ecosystem as a whole. Just like with Lindenwood’s trash outlets, with more recycling outlets and reduced waste outlets as a whole, in addition to there being more recycling, there can be reduced littering, too.
The more recycling that’s done, the more trees that are saved, too. Through photosynthesis, trees absorb carbon dioxide from the air and store it in their wood. Trees and plants will store this carbon dioxide throughout their lives, helping slow the gas’s buildup in our atmosphere, which has been rapidly warming our planet. Through photosynthesis, trees absorb carbon dioxide from the air and store it in their wood. Trees and plants store this carbon dioxide throughout their lives, helping slow the gas’s buildup in our atmosphere, which has been rapidly warming our planet. Trees help fight climate change.
Trees also clean the air, which we can breathe more easily. They remove air pollution that can be dangerous for our lungs. Most of the filtration occurs within 100 feet of a tree. More trees can reduce ailments like asthma and heart disease, which cause 5% of deaths worldwide. Trees and forests also provide habitat for a diversity of life. In addition to forests being collections of trees, they are complex ecosystems of diverse plants and animals. That interconnected relationship of all forest species ensures the forest prospers. Trees protect biodiversity by providing habitats too. Trees, as we know, are cut down and used to make paper, too. But when we recycle that paper, we are stopping these trees from being cut down, helping our environment, animals, and ourselves.
Lindenwood University, and all of St. Charles, Missouri, is a very flourishing place, but it has its environmental struggles. If we want to continue that vibrancy, while providing outlets to combat these difficulties, Lindenwood University must provide more recycling all across the campus.
In addition to how this would help make Lindenwood University, and all of St. Charles is an even stronger place, as well as influencing more students to avoid littering, even picking up debris when finding it, and recycling reusable products, this can remain with students not only through all of their time at Lindenwood, but same with for the rest of their lives. That would help the world drastically in many ways.
