The Pennsylvania State University: Auxiliary & Business Services: Housing: Take Charge Program: University Initiatives

Tip of the Month

Reduce Your Shower Time
If every student who lives on campus at University Park reduced his or her shower by just five minutes, we would save 100,000 gallons of water each school year. That’s enough to fill five swimming pools and lower PSU’s carbon footprint by 18,980 pounds every year.

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The Intern Blog

News

Penn State Expands its Recycling Collection
May 5, 2009

Writing tablet backs, and cereal and gift-type boxes can now be recycled at Penn State. As of this spring, Penn State began accepting paperboard in its mixed-office stream of recycling. This expansion of the types of products accepted will enable the University to increase the amount of waste presently diverted from our landfill, which at the present time is 53%. Paper goods (office paper, cardboard, and newspaper) represent 31% of the University’s waste stream and 35% of the national municipal waste stream.

“This is good news for our program,” said Al Matyasovsky, Manager of Penn State’s Recycling Program, “because it allows us to increase our waste capture, diverting paper from the landfill, and putting it into the recycling stream to be converted into new products.”

The paperboard should be clean, not soiled, and flattened before being placed into the Mixed Office Paper Recycling bins. Please remove any plastic liners as well.

For more information, please contact Al Matyasovsky at aem3@psu.edu

Congratulations!
These students took the Take Charge survey and won $25 in LionCash+.

Sophia Appiagyei
Joshua Guzman
Margaret Olin
ll Kyong Keil

Curtin and Stone Halls Top My 20 Challenge Results
The residents of Curtin and Stone Hall did the most to conserve energy during the My 20 Challenge. During the week-long event (Oct. 19 to 25) students turned off lights, shut down computers, and unplugged cell phone chargers in order to use less electricity and reduce their hall’s carbon emissions. In all, 14 residence halls combined to eliminate over 2000 pounds of carbon emissions during the challenge.

North Halls Repeats as Recycling Challenge Champs
Penn State residence hall students took part in the weeklong Great Recycling Challenge to see which residence area students were the best recyclers. During the school week of November 9, Office of Physical Plant employees separated recycled materials from trash and weighed it to determine the winner.

Take Charge Pen

Take Charge! is proud to present a pen made from completely biodegradable materials. >>