Keep the Forest in Forest City

By: Guzel Tuhbatullina

One way to preserve nature is to recycle. Recycling is a problem as old as the world itself. One might think that it is a common knowledge that we are supposed to recycle. But this knowledge does not seem to be as common in Waldorf University. This particular issue has been raised before but often ignored.

Sara Vattelson-Trutza, a junior at Waldorf University with a biology major, has been actively pushing her agenda on saving the Earth. Starting her first year at Waldorf, Vattelson-Trutza never even considered that there could be a place respected and presented as a university that does not have a recycling program. Vattelson-Trutza did some investigation on her own and what she found was not a pleasing picture.
“No one was told and all of a sudden it just ‘caught on fire’ that recycled paper has been thrown with the rest of the trash collected on campus,” Vattelson-Trutza says.

Multiple attempts to reach the administration with such an important message was not successful, but Sara is president of a Biology club on campus and her fellow members of the club are more supportive of the idea, so are the science professors. The discussion on this issue has been opened in the Student Senate. Senate was on Vattelson-Trutza’s side and helped to spread the word.

Jason Ramaker, the dean of students and head of Student Life group, is also concerned about the recycling issue. “I think the need has been there for a while,” Ramaker says. Waldorf is currently recycling cardboard and some paper is getting shredded. “But the reality is that there isn’t a good systematic program in place,” Ramaker said. “ We know that and we know we are behind on that,” he added.

“I think the main cause as to why we haven’t done anything is because no one took leadership in doing it,” Ramaker added. He gives credit to the students. They have spoken up, some staff members and employees did as well.

Student Senate has started some discussions and has been talking to facilities and even the President’s Council. The cover of labor in terms of collecting and dumping, bagging and separating; the cost that will be involved; the company that would pick up and dump recycling bins; all of this information and more needs to be collected and planned before presenting it to President’s Council. “But it is not a brain surgery. These are things that we can figure out, that shouldn’t be that hard to do and can grow,” Ramaker said. “You do start small. We start with a proposal,” he added.

Ramaker is planning on having a meeting and will let everyone on campus know so that more people participate to help with such problem. Ramaker is positive and thinks “It is a win-win! The companies would make money and we would clean up the campus and the Earth.” He encourages everyone to ” look at it as a good opportunity to do a right thing, keeping that sustainability on the campus and just really making sure that we are doing good for the planet.”