YSU Recycling to receive national honors

Last year, 15 tons of items were donated to charities through re:CREATE.
YOUNGSTOWN -- Two Youngstown State University officials head to Washington, D.C., next week to accept a recycling award on behalf of the university.
YSU was named the 2003 University/College "Partner of the Year" by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's WasteWise program.
After a competitive selection process, WasteWise named 13 Partners of the Year and 1 Endorser of the Year in 14 award categories. Partners of the Year are those who achieved and reported the most impressive waste-reduction results for 2002 in their category.
Jim Petuch, manager of YSU Recycling and re:CREATE, and Joseph Scarnecchia, director of YSU Support Services, will attend an Oct. 16 award ceremony at the Hyatt Regency Washington on Capitol Hill.
"We won and went above the others because of our outreach," Petuch said. "Our recycling is good, but we've got a long way to go. ... But we do two things that are rather unique."
The first of those two is the annual Dump and Run, a spring program that encourages students who are moving out of campus residences to recycle unwanted belongings instead of trashing them.
In 2002, the project collected 5.5 tons that was given to charities, primarily the Addiction Program of Mahoning County on the East Side of Youngstown. Items collected included furniture, computers and clothing, and as a result, YSU workers hauled away only 8 cubic yards of trash, vs. the 30 cubic yards in prior years.
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Petuch said another Dump and Run event is held each December before winter break; last year, 1,000 pounds of clothes were collected for charity. And this fall, 100 cubic yards of cardboard boxes were collected from students during move-in days.
Petuch said YSU is the first Ohio university to join the Dump and Run family, a nonprofit organization based at Brown University in Rhode Island. But, he said he is sharing plans with others, including a group at Kent State University.
The second program gaining notoriety is YSU re:CREATE, through which YSU students and staff collect unwanted items from both the campus and outlying communities. Those items are then donated to local schools and charities. Last year, the group collected 100 gallons of unwanted paint and 15 tons of items such as craft and theatrical supplies, computers and furniture.
TJ Maxx store, for example, donated shoe boxes that were used during the Summer Festival of the Arts at YSU. A farmer takes shredded paper to use as bedding for her animals. And all aluminum cans go to Habitat for Humanity.
Other groups, such as officials at the Ohio State Penitentiary on the East Side, have expressed interest in copying the program.