Paper, string and other odd things
Recycling ‘breaks even’
THE BATTALION Page 7
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 19, 1978
at Rice. UH
Ai?M recycling...
nts at AMI.
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By DIANE BLAKE
Battalion Staff
Students at other Texas uni
versities have been successful in
starting recycling programs,
though they do not make a profit.
Programs at both Rice Univer
sity and at the University of
Houston manage to break even
while conserving resources by
recycling waste.
The center at Rice University
recycles newspaper, glass and
both aluminum and tin cans, said
Tony Palmer, manager or the
program.
“We place bins on the ground
floor of each of our eight colleges
for students,” he said. “And we
have a building where the public
can drop off their material.”
Palmer said since Rice is lo
cated next to the medical center
they get a lot of material from
people on their way to work.
They do not pay for contribu
tions, but Palmer said, “People
are real friendly about bringing
it. Some even crush their beer
cans for us. They’re really glad
there’s a place to recycle it.”
All the profit goes to upkeep of
their half-ton pickup and labor
costs.
“We just got in the clear from
our building costs this summer,”
he said. “We were working out of
a little storage shed, but last year
we had to buy a new metal build
ing.”
The recycling program at Rice
employes seven students. Four
of them are on a work-study pro
gram, in which the federal gov
ernment pays 80 percent of their
wages. The other three are paid
entirely out ot the program’s
profits.
“With out the work-study pro
gram, we couldn’t make it. We
couldn’t even break even,”
Palmer said.
The students work 5-10 hours
a week and are paid $3 to $4.50
per hour.
Most of the work involves
cleaning and sorting. Palmer
said. “We have to keep the place
neat or people will start bringing
other trash out there.”
"During finals when there are
less workers some people bring
things like old lawn mowers,
freezers, parts of cars, vaccuum
cleaners and household trash.
“If they see the place all
junked up they are more likely to
bring out other types of trash,”
Palmer said.
“One of the worst jobs is going
through the bottles to take off all
the metal caps and rings. I have
never failed to get cut doing that
job.”
Palmer said the glass com
panies are “very picky” about
metal, and they also have to
separate colored glass from clear.
In the past the center lost
money on glass because of the
labor involved, but glass prices
recently went up from 1 cent to
1.5 cents a pound. Palmer said
now they may even be making a
little profit on the glass.
Glass also poses a problem be
cause it weighs so much. “We
got a special dolly because some
times those 55-gallon drums
weigh 450 pounds,” he said.
“But we try to keep it down to
300 pounds a barrel.”
Another problem in their pro
gram is fluctuating prices for re
cyclable materials. “In one after
noon the price of paper dropped
50 cents per hundred pounds,”
the director said.
Rice’s program was started
about six or seven years ago as a
small break-even operation by a
few students.
Palmer credits the president of
Rice University, Norman Hac-
kerman, for supporting the cen
ter.
“He had a lot to do with letting
us get started. He is really all for
it,” Palmer said.
“I even saw President Hac-
kerman himself riding a bicycle
with a stack of newspapers for
the center.”
The University of Houston’s
program is set up a little differ
ently, said Larry Gonzales, a
worker in the UH recycling cen
ter.
They have seven satellite
points in churches, schools and
parks where citizens can drop off
their recyclable materials, in
addition to a building on campus.
The UH program has only
three employes, and two of them
are on the work-study program.
The other is paid by the UH stu
dent association. However, UH
does not have the sorting and
cleaning problems that Rice has.
“We make it plain that we
want all of that done completely.
People at one point used to leave
caps on the bottles and we asked
them to please remove them.
“We haven’t had any trouble
since,” Gonzales said.
The UH center gets about two
tons of recyclable material a
week, and about 60 percent of
that is newsprint.
The building is from the uni
versity and a bookstore donated a
van.
Gonzales said the only trouble
they have is getting people to
work during the summer and
during semester changes.
“But we work very closely
with the fraternities and they get
their pledge people to help us
out,” he said.
“Sometimes we have ‘trash
bashes’ where we provide the
beer for a party if they will help
us out.”
Gonzales said sometimes the
fraternities get together to see
who can donate the most beer
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Felony charges have been filed in
ustice of the Peace B.H. Dewey’s
xnirt against two former employees
if Exotic Wildlife Unlimited and a
California animal breeder who had
been negotiating to buy the prop-
:rty from its present owner, the
lank of A&M.
Bank officials have charged Pat-
icia May with theft by appropria
tion. May had been living and work
ing at the property while trying to
3uy it. She was forced to leave the
iroperty last Friday when the bank
eceived a no trespass injunction
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Bank charges zoo
employees, buyer
against her.
Charges of misapplication of
fiduciary property were filed against
two former employees. Bill Calfee
and John Forgie. The bank filed the
charges last week.
The charges against the two men
involve misapplication of gate re
ceipts, a bank spokesman said. The
charge against May includes the al
leged theft of a $200 metal cage.
The spokesman also said that May
had called a local veterinarian and
said she owned the compound. She
asked his help in having three
cougars destroyed.
The veterinarian. Dr. Tommy
Cargill, had no comment on the
charge.
Statements made by a local game
warden claiming that the bank was
selling animals to a hunting ranch at
Kerrville to be killed for sport were
also denied by bank officials.
The ranch owner, Charles
Schreiner IV, said the animals will
either be resold or used as hunting
stock. He declined to say what ani
mals had been purchased.
(Continued from page 1.)
The mission does not pay con
tributors for the recyclable material
and all the profits go for labor costs
and to support the mission.
“The recycling center is mainly to
give the alcoholics housed here
something to do,” Barnes said.
The City of College Station ac
cepted newsprint for recycling until
about a year ago, said George Ford,
director of public services. The city
stopped taking the paper because
the price given for newsprint did
not cover the cost of transporting it
to Houston.
“People are still bringing us pa
per, though, and I guess it’s our
fault,” he said. “We havent’ pub
licized the fact that we quit recy
cling. We had hoped the recycling
industry would improve.
The director said the city takes
the paper it receives to the city land
fill. “We haven’t actually turned
down any paper, but we’d like to
discourage anyone from bringing
any more.”
Coors Central Inc. of 1501 Inde
pendence Avenue pays 17 cents a
pound for aluminum cans. About 24
cans make a pound.
It receives about 16,500 pounds
of cans a day, said John Echols, a
Coors warehouseman. Coors
crushes the cans and sends them to
Alcoa Aluminum in Houston, he
said.
While other types of paper sell for
$30 a ton, newsprint sells for only
$12 a ton, said Dora Swindler of
Delta Paper Stock, a Houston recy
cling company.
Since much of the recycled paper
is used to make roofing and sheet-
rock, the price of newsprint de
pends mainly on the building indus
try, Swindler said.
“It’s hard to believe, vngqHous-
ton, but the building industry
economy is depressed in the rest of
the nation,” she said.
Another reason for the drop in
prices is theferal government’s
change in insulation specifications.
Newsprint had been used to make
insulation, but it has been banned in
the United States.
“It’s a good thing the specifi
cations were changed though,” she
said. “They were filling people’s at
tics with flammable material.”
Newsprint can also be sent to de-
inking companies for re-use as pa
per, but the specifications are stric
ter. No magazines or color comic
sections can be used because they
contain contaminants that can ruin
an entire run of recycled paper.
Although no glass recycling cen
ters are in Bryan-College Station,
plants are in Houston, Waco,
Waxahatchie and Palestine.
An industrial engineer for Anchor
Hocking Corp. said that when glass
is recycled, 100 percent of it can be
used. When sand is melted about
15-20 pecent is lost.
“It takes about 10 percent less gas
to recycle rather than start from
sand,” he said.
Anchor is a Houston glass recy
cling corporation.
poet • • soigvm-tao
THURt’PAY, OCT. [3
TAMU graduate named
ambassador to Mauritius
Dr. Samuel R. Gammon, a Brazos
bounty native and Texas A&M Uni
versity graduate, has been named
Jnited States ambassador to
ps in digfl Mauritius, an Indian Ocean island
cheniiajiation.
The career diplomat, formerly the
lumber two minister at the U.S.
ic super® imbassy in Paris, joined the
parking b Foreign Srvice in 1954. A member
)f Texas A&M’s Class of 1944,
the t# jammon served in World War II
and the Korean War, was awarded a
octorate in history from Princeton
tcryandt University and taught history for
ver knew ’ wo years at Emory University prior
:o joining the Foreign Service.
His father, Professor Emeritus
nafewi* Samuel R. Gammon, was head of
the History Department at Texas
A&M from 1925 to 1955, and the
family lived on the campus during
ndencyl® Gammon’s youth.
Calling himself a “campus brat,”
Gammon said he plans to visit with
his father and many of his former
campus friends and classmates dur
ing a trip here Nov. 2 through 10.
He reports to Mauritius at the end
of November
Gammon’s Foreign Service
career has included tours in Italy,
France, Ethiopia and two assign
ments in Washington, D.C. He was
one of the key American diplomats
in the Vietnam War peace negotia
tions in Paris, where he served
three and a half years.
Mauritius, a member of the
Commnwealth, lies 500 miles east of
Madagascar, 20 degrees south of the
Equator. Encircled by coral reefs
and the blue-green Indian Ocean,
Gammon said Mauritius’ 1 million
population has been dependent on
its single crop, sugar, which covers
90 percent of the island’s 790 square
miles--approximately 1.4 times
larger than Brazos County.
Gammon said hotel develop
ments next to the lush sandy
beaches are turning the country into
a tourist mecca.
The United States first staffed the
island in 1794, and opened an em
bassy 10 years ago when Mauritius
won its independence.
Gammon has served as the inter
national vice president on the Texas
A&M Association of Former Stu
dents board of directors the past two
years. He graduated from Texas
A&M in 1946, after being called to
active duty in World War II with
the entire Class of 1944.
TEXAS OIL & GAS CORP.
CAMPUS INTERVIEWS FOR:
• GEOLOGISTS
• ENGINEERS
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a major independent can offer In addition to a challenging
career. Texas Oil & Gas Corp has an outstanding compensa
lion and benefits program for its employees Contact your
campus placement office and/or academic department
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OUR REPRESENTATIVE WILL BE INTERVIEWING:
Geologists - Thursday. October 26th
Engineers - Friday, October 27th
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