Scattered waste leaves campus unsightly

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litterLitter is all over campus.
We all see it. But what does Delta do to fix the problem?
Groundskeepers on the Delta College campus have a tough job. 21 custodians are tasked with picking up after 19,000 students, staff and faculty.
Their jobs involve: sweeping sidewalks, mowing lawns, raking leaves, picking up litter, helping with maintenance, tending to the vegetation, including hedges and flowers according to the college website.
The work is nonstop.
Even though the groundskeepers are responsible for many jobs, recent developments in the past couple years has hampered the abilities of the current groundskeepers to match the needs of an ever-growing college.
“We used to have 28 custodians then a retirement program came and many retired, [which] left the custodial team with 20 and I just recently hired one so now we have 21 custodians to maintain all of the campus including the new buildings,” said Salvador Rodriguez custodial manager.
Even though the school is retiring more groundskeepers than hiring new ones students’ own personal responsibilities should be accounted for as well.
“We’re in college we need to be accountable and clean up after ourselves. Our campus is very unique by the way it is built,” said student Patrice Burke.
Although trash is a problem there can be simple solutions to the littering problems at Delta.
Trash isn’t a fun subject but many colleges across the United States and Canada are in competition to help raise awareness of recycling such as RecycleMania.
RecycleMania is “a friendly competition and benchmarking tool for college and university recycling programs to promote waste reduction activities to their campus communities.”
During an eight-week period each spring, colleges report the amount of recycling and trash collected each week and are ranked in various categories based on who recycles the most on a per capita basis, as well as which schools have the best recycling rate as a percentage of total waste and which schools generate the least amount of combined trash and recycling, according to the RecycleMania website.
Winning schools receive an award made out of recyclable materials, and win the right to host that category’s special traveling trophy for the coming year.
“It would be good to have Delta nice and clean, the competition sounds fun,” said Student Angel Mariano.
With interest, Delta could participate in the program next fall. Students can take a step into that direction, helping our college branch out and step up to keep our campus clean while having fun doing it.