Monday, February 8, 1999
Letters
Clean up our wasteful campus
I read H. Jayne Ahn’s recycling article "Nurture nature" (News,
Jan. 29) and I’d like to add my voice to the discussion.
Since I’ve been employed at UCLA (beginning in January 1997),
I’ve been appalled at the waste and lack of recycling facilities. I
am not alone in my concerns.
Even the University of California at Irvine (UCI), situated in
the heart of environmentally unconcerned, corporate Orange County,
provides recycling bins for glass, cans and paper in the dorms and
at food facilities.
Thousands of students attend UCLA, students who consume
incredible quantities of food and drinks, both packaged in
disposable containers. While assistant vice chancellor of
Facilities Management Jack Powazeck statement, "Aluminum cans make
up less than one percent of our waste stream" may be true, that one
percent amounts to a lot of aluminum.
Furthermore, the article neglected to mention the high
percentage of beverages sold on campus that come in glass and
plastic containers, for which there are no recycling containers
either.
I find Powazeck’s statement that UCLA can rely on "visitors" or
"entrepreneurs" to recycle the waste to be shockingly shortsighted
and a bit ludicrous. And to defend the Facilities Management policy
by stating that other on-campus organizations don’t recycle is, of
course, a fallacious argument: two wrongs (or three) don’t make a
right.
I am at a loss to understand the reason for UCLA’s reluctance to
provide recycling bins. Is it financial? It’s true that I’m unaware
of the costs involved, but it seems (at least to the uninitiated)
that the costs could not be overly prohibitive. Perhaps the writer
who interviewed Powazeck neglected to ask why. It would have been
useful to readers to know the rationale and the costs involved.
Paying a bit more to keep future generations from being buried
in waste produced by this generation’s excessive consumption (and
refusal to believe that this old planet has limited resources)
seems a worthwhile goal. This would be a worthwhile goal for an
academic institution devoted to loftier realms of thought, rather
than profit for the sake of profit. It’s a question of
priority.
Pamela Grieman
Publications manager
UCLA American Indian Studies Center
Paper recycling paramount
I offer the following clarification. There is one statement in
the Daily Bruin article "Nurture nature" (News, Jan. 29)
attributing a statement to our department. "Facilities claims a
lack of comprehensive recycling program by the administration."
Since I was interviewed by the Daily Bruin, I know I did not make
such a statement.
The Daily Bruin writer asked me about recycling at ASUCLA and
the residence halls and I responded by saying that ASUCLA had
reduced its program due to financial cutbacks, and although the
residence halls did not have a program, a pilot effort was being
initiated (the pilot was mentioned in the article). Pamela Grieman
somehow interpreted that … "to defend your policy by stating that
other on-campus organizations don’t recycle is, of course, a
fallacious argument …"
The issue of aluminum cans has been a frequent point of
discussion. I have nothing against recycling aluminum. However, the
challenge for us is to capture as much recyclable product as
possible. We concentrate on paper because that is the dominant
component of our waste stream.
I am sorry to hear that Grieman is "appalled at the waste and
the lack of recycling facilities" because we spend $200,000
annually to recycle 5 million pounds every year. We have been able
to achieve this even though UCLA has a very complex and varied
waste stream from its buildings, including a research hospital and
many research laboratory buildings.
To clarify, Grieman has quoted me as saying, "UCLA can rely on
visitors and entrepreneurs to recycle (aluminum cans)." The actual
quote in the article appears as " … many of the cans are removed
from our campus by visitors and entrepreneurs."
There are employees and students on campus who collect cans
"before" they even reach the trash cans. There are others who visit
the campus and sift through trash cans and dig out the cans. This
is not a strategy – it is a fact of life. Our strategy is to use
our $200,000 annually to capture paper product.
One of the problems with capturing aluminum cans on a campus
with over 100 buildings and 400 acres is that in order to collect
the cans one would have to place receptacles in every building and
throughout campus and then institute an on-going collection
process. We would rather use these resources for expanding our
paper recycling, which we are doing.
Our goal is to recycle as many pounds of waste as possible,
which you probably agree with. We seem to have differing views,
however, on how best to reach it.
Jack Powazek
Assistant vice chancellor
Facilities management
Comments, feedback, problems?
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