Jeannie Curry
Staff Writer

It may come as a surprise to SCC students new to campus that the recycling bins for bottles and cans are a fairly recent installment. There’s also a chance that students haven’t noticed the bins at all, since they’re not properly labeled.

For an environmentally conscious campus, it seems unbelievable that plastic, glass, and aluminum were typically mixed in with regular trash just last year, and frequently still are. Students trying to fix the problem have faced a heap of logistical and bureaucratic obstacles over the last year and a half.

Last fall, current Student Body President Ivanhoe, as a former member of the SCC Worldly Philosophers and Dismal Scientists’ Society (WP&DSS), began asking around to see if the school had plans to expand recycling. He was told: Plans, yes. But money? No.

WP&DSS and the Environmental Club began collecting student donations to buy recycling bins for campus.

“When it became apparent that students were going to spend their own money on the bins, [former head of facilities] Randy Stegmeier said the school had found money in their budget,” Ivanhoe said. But it was late in spring quarter before the large blue containers arrived on campus and fall quarter had started before they were set up. Though some bins now display temporary labels, others remain unlabeled.

So what’s the holdup? Ivanhoe, who remains close to this project in his current role as student body president, describes a veritable laundry list of issues he has faced.

Initially, administrators would not confirm whether or not SCC had money in its budget for the labels. Then, the project lost a key player when Stegmeier left SCC to accept a position at Western Washington University.

There have also been delays in the design of the labels. Ivanhoe said he and the other students pushing for the bins wanted to hold a contest for graphic arts students to design labels. “Students in the VCT program quietly design and produce quite a few jobs for the campus,” said art instructor Christine Shafner. As “a typical design job with illustration components,” the labels would provide the designers with a service learning opportunity and at the same time save SCC money.

“Part of the reason we want students involved is that this is a very diverse campus and for many students, English is not their native language,” said Ivanhoe. To be effective, the labels must depict a message that can be understood by all members of the campus community. Certain bins would be for glass only, and others for plastic and aluminum.

According Shafner, students in her second-level illustration course will begin working on the project at the start of spring quarter. It has not been determined yet who will choose the most appropriate label for the bins.