Locust Walk or a landfill?

Yesterday students may have noticed a few things they thought they had disposed of sitting on Locust Walk.

In an effort to improve student recycling habits, the Penn Environmental Group partnered with Facilities and Real Estate Services to create two mountains - one of recycling and one of trash - in front of Van Pelt Library. The stunt was one of several planned for Eco Week, PEG's annual push to increase environmentalism.

Both mountains were collected over the weekend at the 11 College Houses and Sansom Place. But while the recycling was collected over a two-day period, the trash represented only half of the weekend total.

Still, the trash pile was larger, said PEG co-president and Wharton junior Laura Boudreau, and contained "plenty of things that could have been recycled."

College sophomore Alec Webley, the sustainability committee chairman on the Undergraduate Assembly, said he was amazed by the amount of paper goods that comprised the trash pile.

But other students who passed the piles said they didn't know what it was.

College sophomore Leah Mintz's initial reaction to the trash was that it was "strange" and that "it smelled."

She added that she doubted the stunt would change her recycling habits.

Although College sophomore Andy Kuhn was handed a flyer explaining the spectacle, he was still unclear about exactly what the purpose was, saying only that he knew it had "something to do with the environment."

He added that although the stunt "was a good idea" and caused him to think about his recycling habits in the middle of the day, in the end it won't cause him to recycle because he doesn't know where to put it.

Boudreau admitted that she doesn't expect one stunt to change habits, but "it did have an impact." She added that over time, she hopes students will learn to "mitigate our environmental impact."

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