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A Word About Recycling with Ollie Maier

Sunday, September 23, 2018

With the football season upon us – Go Bobcats, Texans, Vikes, Cowboys and whatever your favorite team is. Here is a related item from a recent Waste Today newsletter. It concerns something the University of Louisiana at Lafayette has started and we wish all stadiums would do. At their stadium, they started a new recycling/composting program at the beginning of September.

“Trash cans inside Cajun Field have been removed to make way for stations that hold separate bins where fans can choose whether their garbage will be composted or recycled rather than sent to landfills,” the article said.

It went on to say that the program is part of a larger campus-wide effort to produce zero waste. This university recently adopted a plan that calls for reusing, recycling or composting trash that otherwise would be bound for the landfill.

As part of this effort, the stadium will serve food on biodegradable plates and in reusable containers instead of plastic-lined paper products and plastic utensils will be replaced wiht wooden spoons, forks and knives. Beverages will be served in either aluminum cans or recyclable plastic cups, and compostable straws are available by request.

This is the first stadium in Louisiana to have this program. The director of the university’s Office of Sustainability said if this pilot program is successful, the composting initiative could expand to other campus sites.

She went on to explain, with this new program, “… we believe more than 90 percent of the materials inside the stadium will be either compostable or recyclable.” This is no small amount since their tailgaters and fans in the past generated an average of 10.3 tons of thrown away materials per game in the past few years.

She added, “...trash cans will remain in tailgating areas for now, but fans are encouraged to minimize waste by choosing reusable containers when possible and avoid purchasing Styrofoam and glass containers.” This is because both Styrofoam and glass will not be accepted in recycling bins.

The recyclable materials collected will be sent to a processing and recovery facility after every home football game. In addition to the recyclables being collected, they expect to collect about three 20-cubic-yard dumpsters of compostable material per game. This compostable material includes discarded food, containers, straws, cups and other biodegradables. Compostable materials will then be taken to the university’s farm.

Switching subjects, another article in a Waste Age newsletter also caught my eye. Although it has nothing to do with the above, it was something else I was pleased to read. It concerns making a park out of the world’s largest landfill. If you guessed it was in New York City, you are right.

“A planning and design committee has found success in its mission to convert the world’s largest landfill into one of New York City’s most magnificent parks,” the article said.

It then went into a little history of this landfill.

“For years, Freshkills was not exactly a high-traffic destination for New Yorkers. The 2,200-acre site, which was made up primarily of tidal creeks and coastal marshes along the west bank of the New York City borough of Staten Island, was largely uninhabitable before being converted into landfill space in 1948.” As such, it served as the primary landfill for New York City’s household garbage for decades.

“At its peak in 1986 and 1987, the landfill received as much as 29,000 tons of waste per day and employed 680 people. By 1991, the site was the city’s only landfill accepting residential waste.”

I will continue covering this subject next week.

Until then, praying you have an enjoyable and safe one...

--Ollie is a local citizen concerned with the environment and helping others. A retired Air Force fighter and instructor pilot, he is a graduate of Leadership San Marcos and received his degrees at Texas State University where he worked on staff before totally retiring. For questions or comments, he invites you to call him at 512-353-7432 or e-mail omaier@txstate.edu.

San Marcos Record

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P.O. Box 1109, San Marcos, TX 78666