Environmental groups plan to step up efforts
Franklin College, the Earth Club and the Green Team have been taking steps to make campus more environmentally friendly.
Earth Club has several projects planned in the future that will help reduce Franklin’s environmental footprint, said Earth Club president Jon Thompson.
One of the upcoming projects aims to increase recycling efforts by repainting and replacing the bins around campus so they are more visible and accessible to students.
“The most effective recycle bin is the one in the student center. The ones outside the dorms aren’t used as much as they should be and to change this we plan on painting the ones outside,” Thompson said.
Although Thompson thinks that the recycling bins aren’t being used often enough, some students seem to think that the campus is becoming greener.
“I think that Franklin College is making an effort to become greener because I’ve seen recycle bins being put into [the cafeteria] and the residence halls,” he said. I have also seen students who save their recyclables to throw away. Another environmentally friendly move was cutting out the trays in [the cafeteria] because it was an easy conserve water.”
He also said that one of the items students could recycle but often forget about is cans.
“One of Earth Club’s new initiatives is to go around to different [fraternity] houses and collect their empty pop and alcohol cans,” he said. It will be good to have all those cans recycled and with the additional funds we will get from selling the cans we plan on using the profits to benefit earth club.”
Thompson also thinks professors should let their students submit papers online to cut down on wasting paper. If they have to take hard copies, he said, they should recycle them as soon as possible.
The Green Team has been busy with their new project, too.
“The Green Team recently converted used [cafeteria] cooking oil to power a golf cart on campus,” sophomore Sam West said.
The Green Team and Earth Club have also been planning what they are doing for Earth Day next Thursday.
“We are doing earth bingo with residence life to make students aware there is Earth Club on campus and there will be prizes.
We are also teaming up with the physical plant and are going to do projects around campus,” West said.
The Earth Club has new goals for the upcoming year.
“By this time next year we want to make Earth Club well known on campus, create environmental awareness to educate students on campus and acquire one more recycling bin similar to the one at Spurlock,” Thompson said.
