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Steven Noble
Editor, Internal Publications
p. 403.440.5692
e-mail: snoble@mtroyal.ca

Fred Cheney
Media Relations Officer
p. 403.440.5195
e-mail: fcheney@mtroyal.ca

 

At Mount Royal University being green is also being generous.

Over the holiday season, food packs for the annual Season of Caring campaign are being purchased with the help of funds generated from recycling on campus.

Bob Charlton with some of the food packs purchased from the money made from recycling.

To date 290 kg of food bank care packages have been purchased for this year’s Season of Caring campaign — which supports the Students' Association's University Emergency Food Bank as well as the Calgary Inter-Faith Food Bank — as a result of the funds generated from the recycling program and monetary donations from Mount Royal.

During the rest of the year proceeds from recycling are directed to Mount Royal scholarships and help support the Transitional Vocational Program.

Bob Charlton is the retired manager of Security Services and active volunteer with the campus recycling program.

“It’s a win-win situation,” says Charlton. “You get the satisfaction of knowing that you’re not only helping the community through recycling, but you’re also making a difference in the lives of students and that’s what the institution is all about.”

In 1983, Charlton collaborated with Stu Gauthier — former manager of Custodial Services, and the namesake of Gauthier Court — to develop the campus recycling program and Charlton has been actively involved with the volunteer initiative ever since.

Mount Royal community benefits from recycling

The recycling program is also a great platform to help graduates of the Transitional Vocational Program such as Jeremy Burnett gain valuable work experience and enhance social skills.

Jeremy Burnett is busy in the MRU recycling room.

“I get to meet different people on campus and learn recycling sorting skills,” says Burnett.

Burnett graduated from the Transitional Vocational Program in 1991 and has been employed with the recycling program for the past 17 years — assisting with recycling pickup and sorting.

“We lean towards employing students from the Transitional Vocational Program to help them develop their work/life skills,” says Charlton. “Jeremy is a very personable young man and he knows the campus very well.”

Success of recycling program at Mount Royal

The campus recycling program for beverage containers is a huge success at Mount Royal.

“We processed 272,000 pieces last year,” says Charlton. “That’s the equivalent of about 50 to 60 big dumpsters that would normally go to the landfill. So we’re being environmentally friendly and good corporate citizens by recycling.”

The demand for recycling at Mount Royal has increased so much that 80 new recycling bins were added to the EA and EB buildings and the frequency of recycling pick-up times across campus has increased, just to keep up with the larger volumes.

“We’ve created our own monster,” jokes Charlton. “Recycling has caught on big time and now we have to step it up or else it overflows.”

Nowhere is this more evident than in the recycling sorting room. Despite the expansion to the Mount Royal campus over the years the sorting room located by Custodial Services, which has been used since 1983, continues to be the hub for processing all the recycled beverage containers.

“We’re working way over capacity,” says Charlton. “The response to recycling has been so great that we’re literally running out of room.”

“This year we’re looking at a 25 to 30% increase in volume thanks in part to the fact that we’re now able to recycle milk cartons,” says Charlton. “Also, we have new students coming from high school who are more environmentally conscious and they adapt to it a lot more.”

Charlton points out that while recycling volumes are on the rise he is starting to see large amounts of garbage, newspapers and other paper products enter the recycling bins clearly marked for beverage containers only.

“Throughout the campus, we have recycling bins and garbage cans side by side. We even have pictures on the blue bins indicating exactly what we recycle as to avoid confusion,” says Charlton.

Give the gift of recycling

The Season of Caring campaign will continue after Christmas, so you can donate money or beverage containers until Jan. 8, 2010. Contact Charlton directly if you would like to donate your bottles and cans to the campus recycling program to purchase food packs for the Season of Caring campaign.

“Last year we shipped 363 kg of food after Christmas as part of the Season of Caring,” says Charlton. “It’s about giving something back to the students.”

— Jondrea De Ruyter, Dec. 10, 2009