Former President Barack Obama’s Climate Action Plan was made to address and prepare for eventual climate change on our planet. In 2009 Parkland aligned itself with the goals of Obama’s policy framework, leading to a partial shift in focus towards sustainability and recycling. Heidi Leuszler, a natural science professor at Parkland, says that the college has done good work but could do even more to prioritize recycling and sustainability.
Leuszler explains that recycling is when a material has gone through a whole “lifecycle” and instead of just putting it into a landfill, it is put back into “the lifecycle as a raw material.” When it comes to recycling, Leuszler shares an intriguing perspective, “I do not really think it does anything for the planet because the planet will be fine without us…” Leuszler adds that in reality, we need to recycle more to protect our longevity as a species.
For college students, there are several things we can do to increase recycling on campus and in our community. The biggest thing that we can do, according to Leuszler, is to locate the recycling bins and ensure we are putting recyclable materials in the correct receptacles.
She goes on to explain that “wish cycling” is when someone is not sure whether something can be recycled. This is a big obstacle that people face when trying to do good for the planet. The thing that we should do, says Leuszler, is “investigate what can be recycled. If you are not sure it is probably just better to actually put it in the trash.” Adding on to that, she details that many of her students have pushed their landlords to make a recycling program or to get some bins for the building.
Going back to Parkland itself, Leuszler states that Parkland’s method of recycling is okay but not the best it could be. In order to change that, more recycling bins could be placed around campus. With the bins, she suggests that the sizes be changed as well, “we could have big recycling bins and little trash cans,” she explains that this switch in sizes would force people to stop and think about what can actually be recycled and what can not.
Moreover, she details that the way the bins are organized could also be changed. Right now, the college is working with a triple stream program, meaning that there are separate bins for paper, cardboard and everything else. So, if we change to having different bins for glass, aluminum, plastic, etc. then, Leuszler explains “we could support recycling better because we’d be separating all of those materials.”
While recycling is essential it is only a subcategory of sustainability and climate action. Apart from recycling, Parkland has also tried to be more sustainable by planting native prairies which help isolate and get rid of carbon by storing it in their roots. On Parkland’s website, it states that native prairie was put in for “sustainability.” Leuszler explains that many of the patches that can be seen on campus were made before 1995 but were put in because the engineer needed drainage areas for parking lots. She explains that these are not really native prairie but more weed-like. Excitingly though, in 1995 a “tall grass prairie” was planted on Parkland’s circle drive. Leuszler goes on to explain after that, in around 2000, another prairie was planted south of Parkland Way.
Another native prairie was put in front of the U wing but had to be taken out. Leuszler details that “big funders that donate money to Parkland would walk in the building and complain about the weeds that were out front.” The college did not want to lose the money given to them by these funders, so the garden was dug up and replaced by grass. She expresses that “it was just a lack of understanding what it [the prairie] is and what it could do for us – the people that were loudest expected everything to be manicured and controlled.”
At some point, we need to come to terms that our species is almost entirely dependent on a set of finite resources and that those resources will run out if we do not take action. Those reasons are why it is both great that Parkland has done a lot for sustainability through recycling and native plant restoration (whether successful or not), and why we need to keep pushing for further progress and change, whether that be at Parkland, in Champaign County, or better yet the entire world.
