Washington Week: Student Voices (O)

Kansas State volunteers help recycle after games
By Sydney Eagleton
Kansas State Collegian, Kansas State U.
November 24, 2008

At the last four Kansas State University football games, a group of 30 to 40 students havevolunteered to recycle. The student volunteers come to the stadiumparking lots several hours before the games start and pass out bags tofill with recyclable trash. These students also stay after the games toclean the parking lots and inside the stadium.“It’s been really cool because it was a student initiative,” saidZack Pistora, junior in political science, who volunteered for Game DayRecycling. “The students came up with the idea to recycle at footballgames because there are mass quantities of recycled goods.” Volunteers were given two recycling vehicles from FacilitiesServices and two Gators from Telecom for collecting full bags, saidJohn Woods, director of Facilities Services. The volunteers are alsogiven bags to pass out and gloves for sorting the material.On the Sundays after home games, the volunteers gather at the recycling center and sort through hundreds of bags.“We’ve just had a really successful season I think and we keptgetting better all the time,” Pistora said. “We’ve recycled moreplastic and aluminum at these last four home games than the entireuniversity did last year.”While the volunteers’ jobs mainly include cleaning up and makingsure everything is recycled, it is just as important to educate peopleabout recycling, Pistora said.Though there has been a lot of success with the initiative thissemester, it is not a permanent solution for recycling at K-State,Pistora said.“It should be standard procedure that people should be getting paidto recycle because it’s the same as getting paid to clean up after thegame,” Pistora said. “It’s hard work, it should be paid work. Hopefullynext year we’ll get some sort of funding for doing what we do.”However, regardless of whether the position becomes a paid job or not, there will still be volunteers.“If they pay us or not, we’ll probably be doing it because it’s the right thing to do,” Pistora said.

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