By snoadmin
After 38 years of business on Cal State Long Beach’s campus, the Associated Students, Inc. Recycling Center has launched a new campaign to attract more students to use its services.
“Recycle or Die” and “I am part of the solution” are the new slogans printed on the front and back of the new Go Recycle Buy Wear T-shirts and sweatshirts available for sale only to students who recycle or donate at the center.
The idea for the promotion is to remind people that forgetting to recycle can eventually contribute to environmental degradation and destruction, while at the same time encouraging them to recycle and be part of the solution for a better planet.
“In a world of ever-increasing complexity of environmental deterioration, the shirts convey a right now simple message of positive action,” said Lee Johnson, the ASI Recycling Center coordinator.
Johnson, who has been with the ASI Recycling Center for a year, said that he has seen an “enormous improvement” in collection numbers, which he said in part has much to do with an improved ASI leadership involvement.
“There has been about a 20 percent increase in the amount of materials that we have collected over the past year,” Johnson said. “When I first came to Cal State Long Beach we needed to clean up [the center] to accommodate the increase first, before we began reaching out to the students.”
In the past year the Recycling Center collected a monthly average of 110,000 pounds of material that otherwise would have been disposed of in landfills.
Johnson said that in one week last month he “calculated that in buyback materials [aluminum cans and plastic bottles] alone, we collected about one can per second.”
The Recycling Center receives most of its business from people in the community.
“It surprised me when I was talking to a [CSULB alumnus] who had no idea that there was a recycling center on campus grounds,” Johnson said.
Johnson compared the lack of awareness that many CSULB students have about the program to his experience working at Orange Coast College’s recycling center.
“It was impossible to go to OCC without knowing there was a recycling center,” Johnson said.
ASI Communications Coordinator Christina Esparza is working with Johnson to inform students about the new campaign.
“We haven’t done much as far as advertising, but we’re hoping that students will see the shirts and want to know more,” Esparza said. “Getting the message to recycle to students will be the biggest nut to crack, but it is in ASI’s best interest to give the students what they want.”
So far, the shirts and sweatshirts have been advertisements in their own. Many people from the community have seen the staff members wearing them for years and asked how they could be purchased, which has been impossible until now.
“My thinking on that was to create some exclusivity,” Johnson said. “If you see one of those garments on someone, then you know they either work at the center or have recycled at the center.”
The T-shirts and sweatshirts are only a small part of future plans to help increase student involvement. Other plans include educating the public in upcoming tours with lectures and events.
“The Recycling Center is a special asset to the community,” Johnson said. “We as human beings can always do more to help. This is just one small step.”
