Issue date: 10/17/05 Section: News

Evan O´Connell - The Battalion Grant Brammer, a junior computer science major from the Conference of Student Government Associations, sorts through plastic bottles under Kyle Field Sunday.

Amid hundreds of swarming bees and the powerful stench of trash, Aggies from four student organizations spent their Sunday afternoon sorting plastic leftovers from Saturday's A&M-OSU football game.

After every football game, students gather all of the plastic materials left in the stands at Kyle Field. They then clean and sort the materials into plastic bags to be picked up by Earthpak, a company that uses plastic to make backpacks and other accessories.

"It was gross," said Angela Kuhr. "It smelled like puke and dirty diapers. It makes you want to throw up."

Kuhr, a sophomore mechanical engineering major, said the idea that the plastic she sorts goes into creating new items makes her work worth it.

"You know in the end it's going to go toward a greater good," she said.

The student organizations that participated in the recycling efforts are the Environmental Issues Committee (EIC), Texas Environmental Action Coalition (TEAC), Conference on Student Government Association (COSGA) and the Corps of Cadets

On average, people attending the football games consume about 30,000 bottles of water, and on a hot day there can be up to 70,000 bottles, said Christa Chavez, a junior bioenvironmental science major.

"Recycling helps everybody," said Chavez, recycling chair of TEAC. "Students can help us by leaving their bottles in the stands, because if they get thrown away then they don't get recycled."

Chavez estimated 500 plastic bottles were being recycled Sunday.

"We actually don't have very many bottles today," she said. "It's on the low end as far as games go."

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality conducted a study in 2004 on landfill space in Texas and if citizens continue to produce waste at the current rate, the state will run out of landfill space in about 30 years, said Bobby Huff, a senior bioenvironmental science major and chair of the recycling committee of SGA.

"What we see here is valuable to us," Huff said in reference to the heap of bags filled with plastic bottles piled against the walls of Kyle Field. "There's no reason it should be disposed of. It's our wish to get the public to play a role in the recycling process."

EIC and TEAC are working together to convince Coca-Cola Co. to provide recycling bins around the campus, Huff said, and they hope to have the bins by the end of this football season.

Anyone is welcome to help out on Sunday mornings after home games at 8 a.m. in Kyle Field and can get in through the gate facing West Campus.

For more information on recycling in College Station, go to http://www.cstx.gov/home/index.asp?page=2030

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