The USF St. Petersburg Sustainability Initiative launched a recycling campaign calling for 20 new recycling stations on campus.
Sophia Constantine, a deputy of Student Government’s Sustainability Initiative and Sarah Smith, a SG senator, will propose the bill on Feb. 8, asking for about $10,000 to fund the project.
The new recycling stations would replace the receptacles already on campus, which, while only 3 years old, have acquired rust damage from rain, causing some of them to wobble.
Each station will contain both a trash can and a recycling bin, adding convenience to the disposal process, Constantine said. She feels this will be more efficient than the current set up, which has trash cans and recycling bins placed sporadically throughout campus.
The bill asks for money from SG’s capital account, made up of activity and service fees that cost students $25.05 per credit hour.
Constantine says the capital account still holds a substantial amount of money for this late in the school year, but she would not be surprised if SG does not agree to fund the entirety of the project.
If SG agrees to only fund a portion of what is needed, her “plan B” is to go to the Student Green Energy Fund, to which each student contributes $1 per credit hour. Any usage of the fund must first be approved by USFSP faculty members.
Constantine and Smith gauged student interest in the recycling program through posts and polls on various student-run Facebook pages, all of which were well received, they said.
They also created a petition attempting to gain as many signatures of approval as possible. In only her first hour of walking around campus with the petition, Constantine acquired nearly 60 signatures.
From Feb. 5 to 7, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., Constantine will be set up outside of the University Student Center with members of SG. While they sign students up for Pete Sync, she will provide information on the recycling program and collect signatures.
In addition to the recycling campaign, the Sustainability Initiative is working on a bike share program that would allow students to check out bikes from the waterfront for up to seven days at a time.
It is also scouting potential sites for a butterfly garden, working to get a sub-metering system installed that tracks the amount of energy used in each building on campus and — a more ambitious project — determining student interest in establishing a minor in sustainability.
The Sustainability Initiative meets Thursdays at 5 p.m. in the USC Palm Room and welcomes all students.
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Photo by Thomas Boyd.
