By Jasmine Driggs
Marlins Go Green is an active club at Virginia Wesleyan College which works to promote a greener lifestyle for everyone on campus.
Marlins Go Green is the main environmental club on campus. In addition to working to make Virginia Wesleyan College a greener place, the members also work closely with the community to make it greener.
This environmental club participates in many trash clean-ups off campus. On Feb. 21, Marlins Go Green hosted their “Rock this Park” event at First Landing State Park.
While promoting a greener lifestyle, the club’s goal is to help increase the amount of recycled material on Virginia Wesleyan’s campus.
As a resident on the campus, each student is given a recycle bin in his or her room. If there is not a bin in the student’s room, the student can request one from the Physical Plant and they will provide the bin for free.
There have been rumors on campus that students are using recycle bins as trash cans instead of recycling. Rumors have also been spread that housekeeping does not dispose of the recycled material correctly, instead they throw it in the trash dumpster.
Sophomore Criminal Justice and Women’s and Gender Studies major Kaci Wertz said she witnessed people dumping trash into the larger recycle bins along with the bin itself into the trash dumpster.
According to Antozzi, it is the responsibility of housekeeping to take the recycled material from the smaller recycle bins in each dorm room to the bigger recycle bins designated throughout campus.
Virginia Wesleyan College, as well as other colleges and universities, participate in an event called RecycleMania for eight weeks throughout the spring semester. The dates for this year’s competition are Feb. 7 through April 2, according to a newsletter sent out by Director of Community Service Diane Hotaling.
According to the RecycleMania website, “RecycleMania is a friendly competition and benchmarking tool for college and university recycling programs to promote waste reduction activities to their campus communities.”
Schools across the United States participate in this competition. James Madison University, Washington State University, Texas A&M University and Old Dominion University are just a few well-known participants.
Antozzi said he believes RecycleMania is a fun thing for the college to be a part of, even though we normally do not win the competition. Antozzi said he feels the reason we do not win is because we are a smaller college.
In April 2014 Virginia Wesleyan College was recognized by The Princeton Review as one of the most environmentally responsible colleges in the U.S. and Canada.
“When you consider the amount of landfills on this earth, how could anyone not want to recycle? The earth won’t last forever if we use it up, and recycling creates art and useful products,” senior and avid recycler Madison Thomer said.
While some students like Wertz admit they do not have a recycle bin, they try their best to do their part when it comes to recycling. Wertz said she still tries to separate her recyclable items and her trash items.
“I really care about the environment and I think that we as a society should reuse what we can,” Wertz said.
The club Marlins Go Green works closely with the President’s Environmental Issues Council to make the campus more environmentally friendly. The Greer Environmental Center will be used as a focal point for this movement.
