Campus Recycling faces the prospect of being vastly underfunded next year, a result of higher recycling and hiring costs and reluctance within the ASUO to grant the program the full funding it seeks – nearly $316,000, a 62.5 percent increase – because it would likely raise student fees. Among the cuts to Campus Recycling would probably be the elimination of its program to compost food and biodegradable wastes.
While the result of circumstances, this cut is a disappointment – one which, if not remedied, could challenge one of the most important things that makes this University remarkable: the institution’s commitment to sustainability. If we as a University are truly committed to protecting our environment, moving toward a sustainable future, and preparing students for the job marketplace of the next generation, we must make recycling programs a priority.
Decision-makers at the ASUO, University administration, and ultimately state government will further have to realize that the question of funding aggressive recycling initiatives is not a matter of “if,” but “when.”
Our economy today – and historically – functions as an instrument of throughput. The environment is seen as a “source of inputs,” which are processed into “products” that are “consumed,” and then disposed of as waste somewhere in the environment, also the “sink for outputs.” In the long-term, this model will fail by virtue of environmental limits, no matter what our financial priorities of the short-term may be. If we continue practicing this economic model, we will simply deplete all available input sources and reach the maximum capacity of all available output sinks before they can regenerate. In short, the practice is not sustainable.
If this is the case, which it most certainly is in our view, the University will be forced to fund programs which not only compost or recycle some portion of our waste but all of them, unless we want to leave them lying around. This may not become a necessity for hundreds of years, it may happen within the decade, or, as is likely the case, it may already be a necessity and we simply don’t yet realize it.
Once we acknowledge the reality that the need to fully fund Campus Recycling is inevitable by virtue of environmental limits, we can stop talking about whether it’s an important program and begin talking about how long we’re going to wait and how much it will cost us when we do, finally, have to fund it.
Given that a sustainable system of economics is the only option – aside, of course, from complete economic collapse – it is also well within the University’s educational mission to foster an innovative and effective campus recycling program. It is the goal of the University to prepare its students to work future jobs and adapt to or initiate world changes. We cannot pursue this mission if we are cutting programs that will be necessary at some point, regardless of priorities.
A University committed to sustainability is not just one that is responsive to the environmental concerns of its community, overwhelming in this case, but also one that is responsive to the educational and economic needs of the not-so-distant future – a future that our generation will almost undoubtedly live to face.
You can voice your support for Campus Recycling by attending a Department Finance Committee budget hearing on Tuesday, Jan. 20, in the EMU Metolius Room.
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Campus Recycling deserves full funding
Daily Emerald
January 14, 2009
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