The Nicholls GREEN club is working to make the campus more eco-friendly, despite the lack of recycling bins or an organized recycling program.
One way that Nicholls has taken steps to become environmentally aware was the installation of the GREEN club in 2007. GREEN is an acronym that stands for Go Recycle End Environmental Neglect.
Andrew Simoncelli, associate professor of mass communication, was one of the founders of the club.
Before the GREEN club was started, there was no organized recycling on campus.
“The university has mentioned that they won’t do recycling if it costs money, and most recycling does cost money,” Simoncelli said.
One of the members of the club found the company SP Recycling, which paid the university for paper recycling. This was the only feasible way for the university to have an organized recycling program.
Over the summer, SP Recycling, the company that provided the university with three dumpsters for paper recycling, discontinued its contract with Nicholls.
“As of this semester, there’s no coordinated recycling on campus,” Simoncelli said.
Some departments, as well as the library, recycle on their own, and faculty and staff will often bring loads of paper in their own vehicles to the recycling bin located behind the Go-Bears truck stop at the corner of Highway 308 and St. Patrick Highway.
Simoncelli wrote a grant this semester for three recycling dumpsters and individual bins in residence halls and offices. He will find out later this month whether or not it will be funded.
“If the grant doesn’t get funded, we still may approach the administration about putting it into the budget,” Simoncelli said.
Megan Decker, a junior from Gretna majoring in art, is currently the president of the GREEN club.
She said that the reason she wanted to become involved with the organization was seeing them in the quad at recycle day during her freshman year.
According to Decker, recycling here on campus has recently fallen to the wayside.
Decker does not consider Nicholls a very green or environmentally conscious campus.
Though she believes Nicholls has the potential to become one of the greenest campuses in the state, she says it needs the right kind of planning, motivation and work.
Nov. 15 marks America Recycles Day, and the GREEN club plans to celebrate with an event in the quad, similar to their event on Earth Day last semester.
“If we get the whole campus involved, there’s nothing this campus can’t do. We’ve got the numbers,” Decker said.