Aimee Dento, junior environmental biology major, Chris Dvorak, junior secondary English education major and Paul Mose, junior communication major, plant a red bud tree Wednesday evening on Mores Hall Lawn. Kellen Jenkins/ The Bulletin

Members of the environmental club planted a redbud tree on the Morse lawn last night in honor of Green Week. The tree was donated by Davies Nursery, 1601 Prairie St.

“Redbud is a good ornamental tree because it doesn’t grow too big and they do well with all the shade trees that grow around here,” said Aimee Denton, junior environmental biology major and vice president of the club. “It’s a symbolic gesture.”

On Monday the club showed the documentary “Food, Inc.,” which explores the inner-workings of America’s food industry.

Lacee Hanson, senior communications major and president of the club, said Tuesday’s trash dig yielded around 30 pounds of recyclables, collected from various locations around campus yesterday. Hanson said the trash dig had a “pretty good” turnout since recyclable items are generally lightweight.

“It’s amazing how much good you can do just by doing small things like recycling. If you went through the average person’s trash through the year who didn’t recycle, probably about a third of it would be recyclable if not more,” said Paul Mose, junior communications major and member of environmental club. “You don’t have to be a vegetarian to help out the environment.”

The group will host a vegetarian potluck dinner from 5-7 p.m. tonight in Wilson Park. Denton said vegetarianism is one of the most environmentally conscious lifestyles a person can choose.

“Resources are finite,” Mose said. “I think it’s easier for us to go to gas station and just fuel up our cars because you don’t really see the scarcity (of resources). Because of that, we have an obligation to make sure the earth keeps running – earth is good.”

Friday is Earth Day and the club will celebrate by advocating alternative means of transportation. Members and those interested will meet at 5:30 p.m. at Hammond Park for a bike

“If students are interested, hit us up on Facebook – we’re not scary, we’re not creepy environmentalists or weird hippy tree-huggers,” Hanson said. “We’d love to hear new perspectives.”

Kenzie Templeton

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As we celebrate Earth Day today we feel Emporia State should take a moment to seriously evaluate its current campus wide recycling program. We feel it is time to step up our commitment to our community and to our environment by expanding our recycling program to the next level.

The current recycling program on campus is minimal. There are eight buildings throughout campus that are included in the official recycling routine. Paper and aluminum cans are collected on a regular basis by a paid student employee through the Physical Plant on campus. This includes buildings such as King, Beach, Roosevelt and the science building. The bins are short and round blue with holes cut in the top to collect cans. The paper recycling can be found in various department offices throughout the buildings.

In addition there are a few buildings that continue their own recycling programs. These buildings are the union the library and the HPER building. Some of these programs have been operating for over ten years and are maintained by staff faculty and even students.

Campus wide recycling has been a project that has been underway for over a decade. Through various incarnations of the environmental club on campus students have petitioned the student government and the administration for a comprehensive campus recycling program.

When the program did not see completion it was due to one of the following obstacles: lack of funding, lack of a structured plan, lack of student involvement, or lack of volunteers to do the work. More often than not what occurred was that the students involved in the environmental club graduated and the club disappeared. Without those students to pressure the administration there was no strong incentive to carry forward the work.

Over the last three years, the current generation of ESU’s Environmental Club has been working to create a sustainable and affordable solution to the campus recycling issue. They have worked with the physical plant to create a paid student position, the same one that is in place now. The club has also worked with the residential halls to set up basic types of recycling programs in Towers and Morse.

Currently, there is a proposal created by the physical plant to expand what campus recycling already exists. The plan would increase the student position, either by increasing their weekly hours or by hiring additional employees, and spread to additional buildings.

This plan would be best for campus.  We feel that a comprehensive plan that covers all buildings on campus is needed to fully commit to recycling.

Another important component is that the work is done by paid workers and not volunteers. The earlier versions on the plan relied on student volunteers to do the work of changing bins and collecting the recycled material. This allows for mistakes and misses if the volunteers do not do their work. With employees there is a stronger sense of accountability and it guarantees that the work will get done.  It also creates a stronger sense of sustainability for the program, as the employee position can be refilled on a yearly basis, instead of having to find new volunteers on every year.

Emporia State has an obligation to reduce its impact on the environment and community. We should serve as stewards to our planet and help preserve it for future generations. The easiest and most effective way to do this is by supporting this new proposal for campus recycling.

Take time to talk to faculty and staff on campus about making recycling happen. Email the administration to let them know you support a recycling program. The best way to show your support of a recycling program is by supporting what is already existent on campus. Help fill the recycling bins that are already on campus to show there is substantial student support for recycling.

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PHOTO ILLISTRATION BY KELLEN JENKINS

Wednesday, April 22 will mark the 39th time that Earth Day has been celebrated in the U.S.

Emporia State’s Environmental Club, along with the Young Democrats, has planned a week of green activities to coincide with Earth Day.

“Our main objective is to build a culture that values sustainability, that values environmental issues,” said Jen Groves, graduate student in library sciences and president of Environmental Club. “There are still a lot of people who don’t know that we exist.”

Throughout the entire week, members of the Environmental Club will collect recyclables on Main Street in the Memorial Union from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Each time a student brings items to be recycled, he or she will receive raffle tickets for prizes that will be given away on April 23.

A clean-up of Campus Woods has been scheduled for Monday. Students will be provided with gloves, trash bags and trash grabbers.

“We’ll take everything that can be recycled and recycle it and put everything else in the trash,” Groves said.

From 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Tuesday in Union Square, students will be invited to participate in a trash dig.

“We’re encouraging everybody to pick out (recyclables) that they find in trash cans,” Groves said. “We’re going to show how much stuff gets thrown away on campus. We want to demonstrate to administration that there is a need for recycling on campus and that people would support that. If we have a bunch of students digging through the trash, I think that sends a pretty good message that people are dedicated to it.”

Groves, along with Harrison George, junior sociology major, will give a presentation at 6 p.m. in the Heritage room on Tuesday. The speakers will focus on five things that all people can do to be more green.

“We’re green ambassadors for the Kansas Department of Health and Environment,” Groves said. “It’s about five different things that people can do to make Kansas a cleaner state.”

New greenery will be planted at 5 p.m. Wednesday on campus. The tree, a flowering crab apple, is a native species of Kansas. Many of these trees were previously on campus but died.

“We have the okay to plant them back where they used to be,” said Annabel Osburn, senior social science major and president of Young Democrats.

Members of Environmental Club will also collect recyclables at Flintstock on Wednesday night.

Thursday will close out the ESU’s Green Week celebration with a showing of “March of the Penguins” at 6 p.m. in Science Hall room 72. Drawings for the raffle will take place as well. Students must be present to win.

Prizes include gift certificates to Walburn’s and Family Video, cookies from Amanda’s Bakery, reusable grocery bags and a bicycle.

On April 25, Flinthills Mall will host Ecomania, where local businesses and organizations will be present to inform the community about themselves. Attendees will be able to participate in games and activities.

“There’s a recycled sculpture contest so some people are making giant earths out of aluminum cans,” Groves said.

Environmental Club has also purchased 20 recycling bins that they will donate  to the university. Groves said that it has not been determined where they will be placed or what materials they will be accepting.

Earth Day started in 1970 as a grass roots movement that began at the college level. Former Sen. Gaylord Nelson from Wisconsin and Denis Hayes, the first national coordinator of Earth Day, wanted to protest the U.S.’ abuse of the environment and its resources, said Ryan McLaren, Earth Day Network campus organizer

“It was a very grass roots thing that exploded in 1970,” McLaren said. “There was a whole lot going on at that point about protecting the environment, especially natural resources.”

Nelson advocated for Earth Day to become a national holiday.

“Since then, it’s been the day around the country where people stop and think about the environment and do something good to give back to the earth,” McLaren said. “They were really concerned about how we were taking our natural resources for granted. Senator Nelson and Denis Hays thought that the U.S. was really destroying a lot of the great natural resources. They’re really hadn’t been any serious legislation to address those issues.”

Kansas wind energy has been a topic of interest for those who are looking for alternate ways to use natural sources of energy.

Renewable Energy Systems Americas has placed a wind data tower at Highway 170 and Road U in Lyon County.

“We put up an Anemometer on April 7,” said Scott Dunaway, spokesman for RES Americas “It studies wind speed, temperature, direction and pressure. We’re studying it for a potential wind project. We’ve selected that area just to collect data.”

Dunaway said that it is undetermined how long the tower will be there and if a project will actually result from the data collection.

Jim Ploger, climate and energy program manager for Kansas energy office, said that there are dozens of developers that have towers in various places in Kansas and that the developers don’t have to tell the Kansas energy office about the towers they place.

Ploger said that it is rare to find a tower in Lyon or Osage county because developers generally tend to stay away from the Flint Hills area.

Wind energy is harvested by wind machines that use blades to collect the wind’s kinetic energy. The blades are connected to a drive shaft that turns an electric generator.                      When the wind isn’t blowing, other types of power are used to make electricity, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Wind farms have dozens of wind machines scattered over a large area. The prospective development could cover an area of 25,000 acres, 22,000 in Lyon County, according to KVOE news.

In 2006, wind machines created enough energy to power 2.4 million households nationwide, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Ashley Peaches/The Bulletin

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