Recyling Progress at Andrews

It was about ten years ago when Dennis Woodland led the Department of Biology in creating one of the first departmental recycling programs at Andrews University. “I felt that I could do something here in my own environment,” he says.

Woodland, who has taught environmental science for over 25 years, bought plastic containers to serve as depositories for plastic, glass and aluminum recyclables. He recruited students from his environmental science class to collect the recyclables every two weeks, which he then sent to a recycling plant.

The program has become a mainstay of the department, which consistently hauls in large amounts of recyclable materials. Over one two-week period, Woodland and his students collected 12 garbage bags full of recyclable materials. The program was recently improved when the Department of Physics funded the purchase of 24 containers to serve as recycling depositories. They also began taking paper from the photocopy room to Gateway Recycling in Berrien Springs, a recycling center that accepts paper to be recycled at no charge.

As Woodland hoped, departmental recycling programs have popped up in other places on campus, including the School of Education, the Office of Human Resources and the Department of Social Work. At the beginning of this school year, Curt Vanderwaal, chair of the Department of Social Work, initiated a program where every professor, staff and graduate student working in the social work offices received a blue bin dedicated to paper recycling. The department also installed a main receptacle for plastic and glass bottles.

“Curt listened to campus discussion about the environment and this was his response,” says Susan Oliver, administrative assistant. “We hope this encourages environmental responsibility across campus.”

As far as centralized recycling is concerned, last year LithoTech took an important first step in establishing a campus-wide recycling program, setting up a dumpster for offices across campus to take their paper for recycling.

Woodland notes the progress, but still sees room for growth. “I would hope that other parts of campus would follow suit,” he says, “and the university as a whole would become serious in their attitude, not only in thinking about recycling, but also in thinking about what our stance, as Seventh-day Adventists, is toward creation. In our Christian environmental views we are still very behind. We haven’t really grasped the idea of caring for creation. In time, hopefully, we will grow in our experience environmentally.”