— In keeping with our desire at the beginning of a new year to report how some of our local recycling organizations did in their efforts during the previous year, today we will look at Texas State University. (Although they gave the figures in tons, since we have been reporting on other organizations in pounds, we will convert it,)

• Mixed paper – 469,760 pounds

• OCC – 136,920 pounds

• Plastics – 18,740 pounds

• Aluminum – 1,780 pounds

 In addition to the above products, they have just recently started collecting small quantities of scrap metal and toner cartridges.

Next year, expect to see some figures on these two items also.

To service all the many buildings on campus, there are five full time employees and one temporary worker plus 17 student workers.

(It is always pleasing to us to know there are student workers involved. Hopefully, they will take their experiences with them to encourage recycling wherever they go after graduation.)

To transport all the recyclables from the buildings to the central processing area, they use five vans.

In 2009, the university participated in Recyclemania, a national recycling competition between many colleges and universities. (They are now again in the 2010 Recyclmania competition.)

Mario reported that to promote and celebrate Texas Recycles Day this past November, they had their recycling program set up in Quad for the first time.

Things their recycling program is looking forward to this spring include:  

• On March 20th they will be participating, along with community relations, at the Green Living showcase to be held at the San Marcos Conference Center.

• In April they will be participating in the E-Waste event that Risk Management is putting on for the community at Bobcat Stadium.

• And also in April they will be setting up at Aquarena to participate in the Earth day celebration.

(We think the whole community can be proud of the efforts being taken by the students, faculty and staff on the university to help lead the way in recycling efforts.)

 Switching subjects, as was mentioned in this column earlier, on March 2-3, an international conference on recycling plastics was held in Austin.

More than 900 people attended from all over our country plus a number of other countries.

Various topics the speakers addressed included what is being done to make recycling of plastic easier, how to improve the sorting of the various types of plastic collected, new uses for recycled plastics, etc.

One of the speakers from Canada asked the question, “What are the three things that will help the most in the recycling of plastic?”

He answered it by saying, “Education, education, education.” By people being more educated in how to recycle, the benefits of it, and using advances in technology in the processing of the recyclables, more plastic will be kept out of the landfills and used to help mankind and the environment.

(Using that idea of education is the reason Gloria and I try to do what we can through these columns. We hope they are interesting, informative and helpful to you. We thank you for reading them and to this newspaper for publishing them.)

Till next week, do have a great one...



Gloria and Ollie are local citizens concerned with the environment and helping others. Ollie is a graduate of Leadership San Marcos and they both received higher education at TxState University and worked on staff before retiring. For questions or comments, please call them at 353-7432 or e-mail them to omaier@TxState.edu.