Welcome to a new semester: Recycling on the way!

The University of South Carolina Office of Waste Reduction and Recycling was created in 1993 and for years served at the foreground of South Carolina Recycling programs until it disappeared in 2000-2001 due to funding losses and other issues here at USC-SOM.

Now, after a several-year hiatus, with the help of MSA, DHEC (again), and with the encouragement, support, and funding of our deans and Administration, we’re going to be able to get the Recycling Program back online at the VA campus, this time under the management of the USC-SOM Offices of Custodial and Safety Services! We owe most of our thanks for this chance to bring the Program back to life to our Custodial and Safety Services Office, whose hard work and dedication to bringing back our Recycling Program really made the crucial difference in realizing this idea. Our Custodial and Safety Services office has been awarded a $10,000 dollar grant from DHEC to rejuvenate our Recycling Program; our Administration has approved the hiring of a new Recycling Coordinator to run the school’s Recycling Program, and yes, if the ‘creek don’t rise’, we will begin recycling on our dear VA campus this semester.

Here’s how to show your support of our SOM taking this step toward becoming environmentally responsible: Sign up (sheets will be posted Tuesday the 4th) at the back of the M-I and M-II classrooms to help us take out the aluminum can bins from the library and from the M-I and M-II classrooms. And just in case the words -- I’ve got no time -- were just coming out of your mental mouth, this involves maybe twenty minutes total per semester--that’s the first step. Second, we are planning to fill a few new slots on MSA’s Recycling Committee this semester -- you can get involved by contacting our Committee chairperson, Mary Carol Jennings. And stay tuned for updates on the development of our USC-SOM Recycling Program!

Once we hire our new Recycling Coordinator, USC-SOM will be recycling the following items:

For further questions or to get involved, please contact Alice Teich (ateich@gw.med.sc.edu), or Mary Carol Jennings (jennings@gw.med.sc.edu).

The Three R’s of Recycling

• Reduce
• Reuse
• Recycle

Steps to reduce waste, save energy and recyle at school and home (in 150 words or less)

• Configure your home printer to print two-sided
• Bring a coffee mug in from home to fill up on that delicious VA cafeteria coffee or for your evening break at Starbucks instead of using their paper or Styrofoam cups
• Turn off your lap top and unplug your other electronic equipment at home or in school when they won’t be used for at-least 15 minutes -- don’t believe the myth that it saves power not to do so
• Recycle computer and notebook paper in the blue bins around campus -- recycling just 1 ton of office paper saves 7,000 gallons of water -- in 1998 USC SOM recycled 16.1 tons of office paper, 3.11 tons of newspaper, 8.46 tons of magazines, 9 + tons of cardboard, 598lbs. of aluminum and 242 toner cartridges
• Reach for the compact fluorescent bulbs (CFBs) instead of the old incandescent ones when you go to buy new lightbulbs -- they last up to 20 times longer and emit practically twice as much light for a given wattage AND keep a half-ton of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere per bulb-- take THAT global warming!!
• Throw The State newspaper in a recycling bin after reading it in the mornings-- If we Americans recycled just one-tenth of our newspapers, we would save 25 million trees a year
• Recycle those glass Snapple and "soda" bottles-- for every glass bottle recycled, we have enough energy to light a 100 watt light bulb for 4 hours
• Recycle your diet coke and -- adult "soda cans" It takes 95% less energy to make aluminum by recycling it than by producing it from its natural ore, bauxite. It costs less too
• You can recycle spaghetti-ohs and green-bean tin-cans too--recycling and reusing the material in "tin" cans reduces energy use by 74%, air pollution by 85%, solid waste by 95%, and water pollution by 76%

--compiled by Alice Teich--

What’s Up Next Newsletter:

• Health Care Without Harm: Greening Hospitals and Health Care Without Harm
• America Recycles Day, November 15
• Meet your new best friend: USC SOM Recycling Coordinator

Roses and Rasberries:

Roses to USC: Reducing our paper waste

Thanks to the increasing availability of e-journal, e-textbooks, and other curricular materials online at the USC SOM library, students and other users printed an unprecedented 1,003,622 pages for a total cost of $20,717 on paper, toner cartridges, printer maintenance, and printers in 2005/06.

With staggering reality of how much printing is going on the library has decided to join the majority of other medical libraries in the country with a new system to manage laser printing system called Uniprint. At the beginning of each semester the library will credit each of us a set number of free laser prints through our Novell accounts with the option, of course, to purchase additional prints as we need them. Non-student library users will pay .10/page for laser printing and will need to purchase print cards. Instructions on how to use the system will be displayed in the library and on its website.

Roses to the library for making this change -- it will save our school a TON of money and help all of us cut down on the waste that we all make but have so far mostly taken for granted. Direct questions to: Mark Herro, Reycling Representative for the SOM Library

Thanks for Pitching In!

MSA Recycling Committee

Custodial and Safety Services Office