COLUMN: USU must switch to recycled paper
Early this semester the Computer Student Fee Appropriations Committee approved the use of 100-percent post-consumer recycled paper in all of the open-access computer labs beginning in the fall of 2003.
The same bill approved the funding for the paper which comes from raising student computer fees by 20 cents per semester. A paper vendor had offered a solid price quote and was ready to deliver. The committee made this decision based in part on support from the students of USU, acting both directly and through their representative entity, the ASUSU Executive Council.
The council had passed a resolution declaring their support for a conversion to 100-percent post-consumer recycled paper campuswide.
In addition, President Hall has affirmed the need for a more environmentally sound university. A wealth of research information and experience from other institutions was also provided, establishing beyond question the equivalent quality and performance of recycled paper.
As a learning institution of 16,000-plus individuals preparing for their futures, the use of recycled paper is a plainly obvious step that USU should take, in light of our claim to desire environmental and social responsibility.
A few weeks later the same bill was re-opened, and the money from student fees was re-allocated for different uses that did not have the same demonstrated student support and have nothing to do with environmental responsibility.
Instead, all open-access labs, under the new policy, would use paper with only 30-percent recycled content – paper that is allowed to be labeled as “recycled” (as it will undoubtedly be labeled in all the computer lab windows) only due to government regulation loopholes designed for embarrassing and hypocrisy-laced situations such as this.
This late-meeting shift of funding toward other purposes, while scrimping on the 20 cents that would be required to dramatically improve USU’s environmental performance, is an affront to the values and wishes of USU students, a defiance of the resolution passed by ASUSU, and an assault upon the planet that USU students are inheriting, and will in turn pass to our children and grandchildren.
While converting to recycled paper is not the complete answer to our environmental challenges, it is a major part of the equation, as it constitutes one of our greatest environmental impacts as measured by acres of land degraded, electricity and water consumed, and pollution emitted into our air and water.
Other universities that more clearly grasp the issues at hand are switching to recycled paper at this moment, driven similarly by the wishes of students.
While the computer fee committee took the money and ran instead of making this dramatic improvement that USU is clearly capable of, even more regrettable was the non-existent basis on which this change of heart was justified.
No challenge to the accuracy of the financial analysis used as a basis for the 20-cent fee increase has been offered. No school officials have offered more than unreliable evidence that recycled paper is of any lesser performance than paper derived from raw paper, in contrast to the systematic observations of other college purchasers (including in our own College of Natural Resources, which already uses 100-percent recycled paper) and controlled, experimental studies that were specifically cited for the Computer Committee.
These claims of lesser performance are patently false, and cannot stand the scrutiny of comparison to the real world. No other substantive objections have been offered, save the relatively minor challenge of storage space when dealing with bulk paper shipments, which could at least partially be solved through the partial elimination of the University Stores re-sale system.
Fortunately, the Computer Committee is not the last word. The Ecological Coalition of Students, as well as those students who have gone on record as supporting this shift, call upon the university administration to convert the entire university to recycled paper for standard printer and copy applications (the vast majority of our paper use) as quickly as budgetary logistics will allow.
This shift should include the academic departments, USU Extension, the self-serve copy machines, other adjunct university units, and the open-access computer labs. We believe that this university is strong enough to do the ethical thing and does not need to postpone the campuswide use of 100-percent post-consumer recycled paper any longer by meddling in bureaucratic tradition or penny pinching on crucial issues.
This switch to recycled paper carries the on-record support of the USU student body, is the right thing to do for the world being inherited by USU students and is simple, realistic, intelligent and easily achievable. If USU practices what it claims to stand for, it will step forward and meet this challenge.
Vanessa Welsh is a senior majoring in environmental studies. Comments may be sent to vkwelsh@cc.usu.edu.