Thursday, March 28, 2024

ASMSU supports groups use of recycled paper

March 15, 2001

ASMSU is looking to change its environment - indoors and outdoors.

The undergraduate student government plans to support ECO, an MSU student environmental group, in efforts to convince the university to use 100 percent recycled paper.

ASMSU’s Academic Assembly recently passed a bill, composed by ECO, stating the undergraduate student government will purchase only chlorine-free, 100 percent recycled paper for official usage.

And ASMSU representatives hope MSU will do the same.

“We want to be as conservative as possible, that’s the message we want to send out,” said Marcia Short, ASMSU Academic Assembly vice chairperson for internal affairs. “Hopefully, the university will pick up on that also.”

ASMSU’s Student Assembly is also considering a similar proposal Thursday.

“Any steps we can take to reduce waste and recycle paper is good steps,” said Bobbyjoe Glover, a College of Engineering representative for the Student Assembly who agrees with the bill’s intentions.

Last month, ECO held a rally on Farm Lane urging university departments to switch over from the more commonly used 30 percent recycled paper.

“We’re very excited that (the bill) passed,” said ECO co-coordinator Liisa Bergmann, an environmental policy sophomore. “It’s a good, solid step toward getting MSU to use 100 percent recycled paper 100 percent of the time.”

Following suggestions by the environmental group, some MSU departments and colleges have opted to use 100 percent recycled paper, including the Eli Broad College of Business and the Department of Philosophy.

Despite complaints about the paper’s quality, the change seems to inspire no complaints from ASMSU office staff.

“It’s not that different, it just has a different feel to it,” said Neva Brown, ASMSU loan clerk. “I think it is a good idea.”

The approved recycled paper measure also follows a trend that began within ASMSU last year when the Academic Assembly approved a resolution encouraging MSU to become a paper-free university. The resolution asked faculty and students to decrease paper usage by utilizing Internet and computer resources.

However, the resolution did not gain momentum with university officials.

“We just came into a brick wall and it stopped at the (Academic) Governance level,” Short said.

Short said MSU professors also objected to the proposal, citing that receiving assignments on computer disks and through e-mail could only make way for computer viruses as well as cause other issues.

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