In celebration of the 25th anniversary of Earth Day, SF State's Recycling Center and EcoAct, a student organization, began a two-day event yesterday featuring speakers and exhibits on environmental issues.
The second part of the event, being held from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. today in Malcolm X Plaza, will focus on ways people can protect and improve the environment.
"We want to get people aware of environmental issues in the Bay Area and get involved," said Kara Mengahini of the recycling center.
One exhibit at the event was SF State's new electric shuttle bus that will start transporting people from the Daly City BART station to SF State on Monday.
The recycling center's goal is to recycle 80 percent of the campus' 2,000 tons of yearly waste. Now, it recycles 30 percent, according to Lorreta Carbone, operations coordinator for the center.
"Students must be educated on the positive and negative aspects of environmental issues and must learn to act on them in positive and beneficial ways," said Lars Yarr, the center's education and outreach coordinator.
Launched in 1987 as a class project to find ways to deal with the problem of waste on campus, the center has become one of the best and most efficient in the country, according to Carbone.
"We recycle wood, two types of plastic, aluminum, glass, organic and yard waste, tin and paper," Carbone said. "On a typical month we recycle around eight-and-a-half tons of paper and 10,000 to 13,000 pounds of glass."
Banning styrofoam from campus food vendors is one of the many environmental conscious ideas the recycling center has implemented. In addition, the center convinced the university to buy recycled paper and it's trying to eliminate plastic containers from the vendors.
According to the center, people are recycling more and more each year, but there is still a long way to go.
"We want to make it hard for people not to have easy access to recycling bins," Mengahini said.
"We want the campus to work harder to recycle more," Carbone added. "We need all the help we can get."