(With Special Focus on Recycling)

In the 2005-06 school year, Point Loma Nazarene University created a full-time staff recycling coordinator position. The position is held by Celeste Howe.

In Academic Year 2005-06

For academic year 2005-06, the Resource Stewardship Task Force has determined Creation Care Week will be moved from spring semester to the fall, between September 17 and October 2. This change is designed to orient new PLNU students to the stewardship ethos of the university at the very beginning of their careers.

An Invitation: If you are an employee or student at PLNU and would like to volunteer to serve on the Resource Stewardship Task Force or to help the Task Force or Physical Plant with the work of creation care, please write one of the Task Force co-chairs: Phil Bowles, professor of English (PhilBowles@pointloma.edu) or Richard Schult (RichardSchult@pointloma.edu).

In Academic Year 2004-05

Coming near the end of the previous school year – or during the summer break – were two honors for which PLNU Physical Plant submitted application paperwork. Both recognitions were decided mainly on the strength of PLNU’s reduction of its waste flow to the landfill by more than 50 percent, as well as the institutionalization of Resource Stewardship in its campus-wide Task Force and in its Recycling Program under the leadership of the office of Housekeeping. The first was a local award conferred by the mayor of the City of San Diego. PLNU was the only institution of higher education among the handful of diverse businesses to receive the Recycler of the Year Award in a special awards ceremony in May.

PLNU was also recognized by the state of California as it conferred on the university one of its annual WRAP awards. These awards are given to organizations that best represent California’s goal of zero-waste by their efforts to reduce, reuse, and recycle.

The Task Force and the university bade farewell to Celeste Howe, the first Student Recycling Intern, who graduated, and welcomed Renee Robertson, graduate student in theology, as its new recycling intern. Renee and her supervisor, Tony Agostini, have pressed forward to improve collection processes and hardware, including the installation of new composite collection bins that are companions to the existing concrete trash-collection units. These containers prominently display the recycling logo on the side and include a metal top that reads “recycling only” and offers a smaller-than-usual hole for depositing cans, bottles, etc.

The recycling intern’s office also sponsored Reduce-Reuse-Recycle Theme Week in the residence halls to heighten awareness of and participation in the campus-wide recycling program. The theme week got students excited and educated about the recycle program though a competition. The winning hall received a prize party for their efforts. Next year the residence hall competition will be against other residence halls on campuses nationwide.

The Second Annual Creation Care Week, April 9-16, 2005, offers expanded opportunities for the PLNU community to hear and see presentations, engage in conversation, and act for the health and conservation of natural resources.

In years past, there has been a felt need among residential students at the end of the academic year to have a place to leave various clothing, electronic hardware and software, books, furniture, appliances, and so on. Unless they were able to take such items to the Goodwill or the AmVets, for example, students often chucked these extras into trash dumpsters. For the first time, May 11-13 and 16, PLNU will hold a Discards Swap Meet. Students will be asked to donate unwanted items. Students and staff will also be invited to take a look at those items throughout that period and then claim any items they could use. When the Swap Meet closes, the remaining items will be donated to local organizations for distribution.

In Academic Year 2003-04

The main push in 2003-04 has been to get a comprehensive, single-stream recycling program up and going in all the buildings of the main campus in Point Loma. (Note that the Mission Valley campus was added to the PLNU recycling network in 2004. The Bakersfield campus is already served by its building management, and the Arcadia campus – with spotty recycling – is open to improvements.)

At the beginning of the school year, Task Force and Physical Plant personnel made appeals to various groups on campus, not only for participation in the new recycling effort, but for theological and philosophical consideration of Creation Care. These groups included student leaders (at LEAD orientation), the faculty in a regular faculty meeting, peer educators, resident directors, the main campus staff in staff chapel (Michael Pitts, speaker), and the student body in chapel (Michael Lodahl, speaker).

In the fall of 2003, the Task Force visited Ocean Beach People’s Market to see one food cooperative’s approach to co-generation of and conservation of electricity, as well as its approach to organic food alternatives. Members of the Task Force also attended a local Enviro Fair in November. Sociologist David Barrows, who attended the San Diego Inter-Faith Energy Workshop, also reported to the Task Force what he had learned about energy-saving building designs.

Batteries of several kinds may now be recycled on the main campus, according to Physical Plant. Small batteries may be sent via Campus Mail to the Recycling Intern or to the Hazardous Materials Specialist, both in Physical Plant.

The Task Force ends the school year focused on the first Creation Care Week, April 16-23.

It is now President Brower’s job to review the Task Force’s work for the year and decide what is to be done in 2004-05.

– Phil Bowles, Co-Chair (updated March 2004)

In Academic Year 2002-03

Student activist Celeste Howe, returning from study abroad in New Zealand, complained loudly that our university should be recycling – and much more.

Coincidentally, Richard Schult in Physical Plant was working on contract options for a new single-stream recycling program and decided, along with the vice president for business affairs, on a particular company.

After a conversation with Celeste Howe, Phil Bowles, professor of English, expressed concern to the Faculty Council, the Cabinet, and the president. Dr. Brower responded that recycling was something PLNU should do and proceeded to appoint PLNU’s first Resource Stewardship Task Force (see President’s Charge to the Task Force and Task Force Membership) for 2003-04, to be co-chaired by Schult and Bowles.

The Task Force film – which was a report on some of the earth-keeping work already underway but also an appeal to the campus community to join the recycling effort – was filmed and directed by Johno Wells of Redtimes Films and is available for viewing on this web site.

Celeste Howe was hired by Tony Agostini – the head of housekeeping and events – to design and implement the comprehensive, single-stream recycling program.

My dream is that we not only recycle sustainable resources, cutting down the huge stream of waste, but that we also increase the quantity and quality of conversation on campus and of presentations about scientific findings and philosophical and theological thinking on the subject. We should invite experts to campus to enhance our conversation, and we need to go off campus to see what others think and do in this arena. Over time, PLNU should collaborate with Christian and secular organizations to improve thinking, conversation, and action in resource stewardship.

Before Academic Year 2002-03

A dozen years ago, a grassroots ad hoc group of faculty and staff was successful at having Physical Plant begin paper recycling in offices.

Later, the baling of collapsed cardboard boxes and the crushing of the gallon tin cans from the dining room’s food service were begun. More recently, asphalt and concrete debris at construction sites on campus has been ground for recycling.

Even before these initiatives, Physical Plant recycled motor oil and the Grounds Department of Physical Plant emphasized the recycling and propagation of plants, the mulching of grass, twigs, and limbs through the recently-acquired chipper, and the saving of vegetable waste from the dining hall, which is fed to worms in the earth worm farm.

Several areas on the main campus have become areas for coastal southern California native species of plants. A comprehensive listing of native species on the Point Loma campus has been compiled by the Grounds Department of Physical Plant, which has decreased the use of water for irrigation and the use of chemicals for pests of various kinds.

But recycling of paper across campus had been spotty at best and, for a year or so before the fall of 2003, on again, off again. Sporadic recycling of aluminum was handled by various groups across campus, and the recycling of plastics had been almost nonexistent.