Photo by Chris Meyer
Greg Fichter, assistant director
of building services at the IUB Physical Plant, has
been involved with recycling initiatives on the campus
for many years and believes that chances of a future
“paperless campus” will depend on employee and departmental
commitment as much as policy directives, which also
has been the case with campus recycling programs. IU’s
Gary campus launched a recycling initiative in April
2002; the bright yellow containers around campus became
part of campus routine, saving 16.47 cubic yards of
landfill space in its first six months of operation.
IUB received the Governor’s Award for success in recycling
in 1997, and IUPUI’s Center for Earth and Environmental
Science received a Governor’s Award for environmental
excellence in 2002.
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The mission of the council’s third working group is to reduce the consumption and waste of paper on the IUB campus and ultimately, to move towards making IUB a “paperless campus.”
Currently, the Bloomington campus Physical Plant recycles more than 1,300 tons of paper annually, in addition to recycling organic debris collected by the Campus and Grounds Division for re-use as mulch for campus flowerbeds. The recycling program has been streamlined over the years and uses in-house custodial staff to remove all recyclable paper from buildings and put it in recycle dumpsters or on the dock. A dedicated packer truck and two employees then transport the material and deliver it to the Monroe County recycling site.
Greg Fichter, assistant director of building services at the Physical Plant, said he has seen heightened awareness of recycling procedures in recent years, but maintains that policy alone can’t achieve CFES’s objective of making IU a paperless campus.
“The issue of recycling at IU is the responsibility of all students, faculty and staff,” he said. “We can operate an effective collection program and educate our customers to the best of our ability, but it takes the effort of individual departments and people to make it work well.” Fichter encourages people to explore the recycling guidelines on the Physical Plant’s Web site:
http://www.indiana.edu/~utility/
Paper facts
• The U.S. has 5 percent of the world’s population
and consumes 30 percent of the world’s paper supply.
• The average American consumes 737 pounds of paper
per year.
• The average person in a developing country consumes
only 39.6 pounds of paper per year.
• A report by the United Nations Environment Program
states that only 66-88 pounds of paper are needed per capita
to meet basic literary needs—12 percent of what is currently
used.
• 38 acres of Southern Pine forests were used to make
the 19 million pages printed at IU’s Student Technology
Center in 2000-01.
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