East Lansing residents discarded bicycles and loaded scrapped lumber into containers Saturday in an effort to make the city more environmentally friendly.
Volunteers at the 12th annual Project Pride spent the day collecting everything from scrap metal to cardboard boxes at Abbott Center, 1400-1500 Abbott Road. The project is a once-a-year event that allows community members to drop off any recyclable materials instead of throwing them in the garbage.
Susan Schmidt, one of the event's coordinators, said city residents want to recycle more.
"This day is always a positive experience and the city shows huge support," Schmidt said. "The idea of today is to show that East Lansing is ecologically responsible, and I think this day does that."
The event was originally developed by former mayor and current City Councilmember Mark Meadows when he was a member of the commission on the environment.
"I had heard about a similar event that was held in Holland (Mich.) every year and felt that I should go out there and see what it was like," Meadows said. "After going there, we felt we wanted to reproduce what we saw in Holland here."
Meadows added that the project has always gotten a positive reaction from everyone involved in it and said that it helps make East Lansing cleaner.
"It really emphasizes the community's commitment to the environment and the importance of reusing things over and over again," Meadows said.
More than 80 volunteers worked at the event, including 25 players from East Lansing High School's junior varsity football team and their head coach, Marc Foster.
Schmidt said this year's project was not as busy as she has seen in the past. But there could be a positive reason for that, she said.
"We think there was not as much of a showing this year because people are getting ahead of us and recycling things on their own," Schmidt said. "Which is, in fact, a good thing."
While the event encourages recycling within the city, it also gives MSU students an opportunity the university does not provide.
MSU is one of the only Big Ten universities that does not have a center to enforce recycling on campus.
Fred Poston, vice president for finance and operations at MSU, said interest in recycling efforts is growing at MSU, and the administration is trying to build a recycling center for the university.
"We are in the process of updating a report on the possibility of a recycling center for Michigan State," Poston said. "The trustees and the president have shown interest as well."
Joel Ferguson, an MSU Board of Trustees member, got excited about the prospect of a center on campus after a group of students gave a recycling presentation during a recent board meeting.
"We want to do everything we can to help out the environment at MSU, and we feel this recycling center can do that," Ferguson said. "These kids woke us up so we're going to sit down and talk about how it can get done."
There had been plans to build a center a couple of years ago, but former President M. Peter McPherson decided not to go through with them, Ferguson said, adding that now is the time to finish what has been started.
"Michigan State is going to catch up with everyone," Ferguson said. "The president and trustees really want this now, and we're going to do it."
Students interested in recycling can drop off their recyclables at the Granger Landfill, 8550 W. Grand River Ave., or at the East Lansing recycling facilities, 2000 Merritt Road.
