In the news.
We found our way into the Nov. 11 edition of MSUM’s campus newspaper, The Advocate, thanks to the lovely Jenessa McAllister.
Class inspires recycling campaign
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BY JENESSA MCALLISTER
Copy Editor
Recycling is not a passion that many college students would claim. But seniors Holly Lavecchia and Jenny Christen have decided to channel their devotion to recycling into an assignment for class.
The Dragon Core class sociology 319: people and the environment, requires groups of students to conceive an action project based on sustainability, especially focusing on MSUM’s campus.
Lavecchia and Christen save recyclable items from the trash bins around campus and place them into the appropriate plastic, aluminum or glass receptacles.
“Jenny and I are just really enthusiastic about recycling, so it was a no-brainer to go in that direction,” Lavecchia said. “But the most fun and dorky part is that we track how much we save over the two months on a blog.”
The blog, called Recyclination, includes posts from Lavecchia and Christen, photos of their findings as well as general information about recycling. Recyclination’s tagline is “Two women, one college campus, hundreds of trash cans filled with thousands of recyclables.”
Christen is a graphic design major, and Lavecchia is an English and mass communications major, so the two thought that a blog would be a good way to marry their talents.
One of the main stipulations that they set for the project was that they would not go out of their way to save recyclables.
“We don’t alter our daily routines,” Lavecchia said. “When we see recyclables in the trash we just fish them out. The point is that we don’t go out of our way or do anything crazy or ridiculous, we just continue the habits we’ve established and by quantifying what we find we’re proving that it isn’t hard to make a positive difference.”
One evening, however, they decided to set out and save as many recyclables as possible from campus.
“We wanted to see what it would look like if we collected a whole day’s worth of discarded recyclables,” Lavecchia said.
“It was the one day we allowed ourselves to stray from our ordinary paths and collect misplaced recyclables from places we don’t usually encounter,” Christen said. “It was astounding to see the volume that amassed. In just two hours we collected 300 recyclables.”
In fact, from their endeavor, they saved 159 plastic, 133 aluminum and seven glass items from trash bins around campus.
This boosted the already-impressive totals of items that will now be recycled, rather than sit in landfills.
After five weeks of keeping track, the totals have reached 552 plastic, 341 aluminum and 16 glass items.
“We’re focused on making people aware of their habits, and changing them for the better,” Lavecchia said. “The definition of a habit is something that you do over a prolonged period of time, so much that it becomes involuntary. So if people are throwing away their recyclables involuntarily, that’s something that we want to try and fix.”
Both of the women agree, one person can make a difference in an effort such as recycling.
“To those who think singularly, ‘I’m just one person, what difference does it make,’ we hope they’ll see what we’ve done and witness the difference that one or two people can make, day by day,” Christen said. “To those who aren’t aware or could care less about recycling, we hope that seeing us being garbage hounds will ignite mindfulness in what they’re doing with their ‘trash.’”
The blog is located at www.recyclination.tumblr.com.
McAllister can be reached at mcallistje@mnstate.edu
