Program keeps recyclable
trash from going in landfills
Recycling consultant says
current curbside programs
are good idea, but costly
By Andy Raun
Staff Reporter
A simple, all-inclusive recycling program
would make belter economic and environmen
tal sense for Lincoln and other U.S. cities than
conventional curbside programs, a Tennessee
recycling expert said Friday.
John van dcr Harst, a
Nashville solid waste man
agement consultant, said a
two-stream, wct/dry recy
cling program, under which
commercial and residential
waste generators would sepa
rate hazardous waste and
compostable matter from clean, dry waste,
would reduce the volume being buried in land
fills and yield a greater recovery rate for reus
able materials.
In ihc wet/dry program, wet waste — tood
scraps, soiled paper products, yard waste and
the like — is pul through a three-week
composting process, then screened and allowed
to cure lor a year before being sold to farmers
or others. Dry waste is sorted manually or
mechanically and recycled if possible.
Curbside recycling programs, under which
such items as plastic milk jugs, metal and
newsprint arc sorted out by the waste genera
tor, arc a step in the right environmental direc
tion, but participation and recovery rates arc
loo low and per-ton recycling costs arc loo high,
van der Harst said.
Van der Harst, who has lived in Nashville for
11 years, is a solid waste management consult
ant for Nashville, Tcon., and Davidson County.
He also has been a consultant for the Institute
for Local Self-Reliance in Washington, D.C.
In the last three years, van dcr Harst has
traveled to about 25 states and Canada to study
more than 1 (X) local recycling programs. He
was in Nebraska for the Nebraska Slate Recy
cling Conference in Omaha, and he traveled to
Lincoln to speak to about a dozen students and
staff members in an East Campus meeting
I
sponsored by Ecology Now.
In pilot wet/dry programs, up to 98 percent
of the recyclable and compostable materials
have been removed from the waste stream and
kept out of landfills, he said.
Recovery rates in pilot wet/dry programs arc
at least 50 percent higher than those achieved
under conventional programs, he said.
But because the wet/dry program eliminates
steps such as sorting yard waste from food
scraps, the quality of compost produced can be
poorer than that produced under conventional
programs, van der Harst said.
Two-stream wet/dry recycling already is
common in Europe. North America’s first such
full-scale operation is being built in Guelph,
Ontario, a city of 137,000 residents. Once that
operation is on line, other communities can
watch its progress, van dcr Harst said.
Two M innesota cities arc using three-stream
wet/dry programs, and debate is raging among
recycling experts about whether two-stream or
three-stream programs are better, van der Harst
f
Under a three-stream program, the dry waste
is separated into recyclable and non-recyclablc
bins, and the non-recyclablcs arc sent to the *
landfill.
Van dcr Harst said those who supported the
three-cycle program were buying into propa
ganda disseminated by businesses and indus
tries that could make more money off the three- (
stream program. I
He said American companies that opposed |
wet/dry recycling were trying to line their
pockctbooks without any real regard for the L
environment. .
Americans interested in implementing the J
most efficient recycling programs must over- j
come corporate sway and go straight to their
elected officials, he said. ,
“This is a classic citizen vs. industry fight,” |
he said. ,
Regardless of its effect on established busi- <
k nesses, society would fare better with wet/dry
recycling systems, vkn dcr Harst said. I
“In the long run, we will be ahead with the j
high-recovery system — in ways not the least
of which is quality of life,” he said.
■---1
Keep positive, speaker says
By Heather Sinor
Staff Reporter_
* *
The most critical value issue facing the
University of Nebraska-Lincoln today is
how people treat and react to one another,
the AS UN president said.
Andrew Sigerson spoke Friday at the
East Campus Union as part of the Food for
Thought fall series, titled “Weighty Matters
that Can’t Wait: Critical Value Issues for
UNL in 92-93.” j
Sigerson said peoplt/could see the dam
aging effects of how they had been treating
one another in several recent campus events,
such as the disappearance of Candice Harms.
He also asked, “What possessed a man
with a gun to walk into class?” and “What
possessed people to gather around one an
other in frontof the (Nebraska) Union around
an evangelical preacher and yell in each
other’s face?”
Sigerson cited campus theft, acquain
tance and date rape and the breakdown of
minority relations as reasons to demand that
people treat one another with more respect.
Students come to the university molded
by different ideas, beliefs and values,
Sigerson said, and they must find ways to
overcome differences that arc damaging.
He said educating students through a
mandatory multicultural class, however, was
not the solution.
“I’m not going to remember the book I
read in a college class,” he said. “I’m going
to remember the Rodney King riots and the
man with the gun.”
Sigerson said he favored integrating
multiculturalism within existing classes.
Within sororities and fraternities,
Sigerson said, diversity is almost null. The
application procedure encourages white men
and women to apply, he said.
It’s neither unusual nor bad for people to
want to be around others like themselves,
Sigerson said, as long as they respect others’
values.
Sigerson said the way to overcome treat
ing one another badly was to have a positive
attitude.
“Things aren’t so bad,” he said. “Instead
of telling graduating seniors how difficult
the job market is right now, why don’t we
instead focus on how many students do get
jobs?”
If students are upset about a problem,
Sigerson said, they should fight for what
they think is right in a positive way.
He said he believed the situation with
former English professor Joyce Joyce, an
African-American who left the university
over an academic freedom dispute, was
healthy for UNL.
“It gels us thinking,” he said.
The fall Food for Thought luncheon pro
gram on East Campus is sponsored by the
United Ministries in Higher Education at
UNL, the UNL Lutheran Center and St.
Mark’s on-thc-campus Episcopal Church,
in cooperation with the UNL program in '
religious studies.
Sigerson was the second of three speak
ers in the program. UNL Chancellor Gra
ham Spanicr is scheduled to speak Nov. 20.
Standards
Continued from Page 1
Gricsen said the recommendations for the
iniversity system and UNL already had been
mblished, but the University of Nebraska at
)maha and the University of Nebraska at
Ceamey still were completing their proposals.
UNL requirements are more stringent than
he universitywide recommendations, he said.
JNO also is likely to require stricter standards
han the requirements set by the university, he
aid.
UNL standards will require high school
graduates to complete four years of English,
our years of mathematics, three years of social
studies, three years of natural sciences, two
^ears of a foreign language and one year of
another unit, preferably performing arts, to be
admitted in fall 1997.
The current standards require four years of
language arts, including three years of English,
and two years of math, natural sciences and
social studies.
By 1994, Gricscn said, UNL proposed to
require its freshmen cither to be in the lop half
of their graduating class or receive a score of 20
on their ACT. This was in addition to the
completion of the 10 units now required by
UNL.
Gricsen said he thought the tougher stan
dards would belter prepare students for college
academics.
“I’m not sure we’re doing anyone a favor
when we admit them and then promptly fail
them,” he said.
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