4 UNBC Life Recycle or Die Robert Corbin Guest Contributor he city of Prince George 2 years ago implemented a municipal materials recycling program to decrease the sheer amount of reusable, compostable, and recyclable material that was making its way to the landfill. Those of us that have been around for a while remember the landfill when it was a hole in the ground that needed to be driven into with a pickup truck, while today it is now a mountain stretching more than a kilometre long and wider than half a kilometre. The very large majority of “garbage” at the landfill consists of largely compostable food, and recyclable materials including aluminum drink containers, bottles and a large amount of recyclable plastic. While working at the landfill in 2013 performing a waste characterization study, an observation was made that the dollar value in drink containers making its way into the landfill at the time would be close to $3 million annually, based on the fact that $110 a week was being made taking in cans and bottles separated from the garbage that was being sorted. Not every dump truck load of garbage was sorted, because the study wanted a best estimate of the quantity of materials going to the landfill and representative samples needed to be taken. Enter UNBC in 2016. For whatever reason, UNBC with its moniker of Canada’s Green University, has decided that garbage cans should be removed from many of the public spaces on campus, and instead replaced with recycling stations. A few locations on campus, relatively speaking, also have compost buckets as well. In spite of these moves, garbage still exists and needs to go somewhere. Many students have gotten fed up with hunting around trying to find a garbage can and resort to throwing their garbage into the recycling bins. Everything is recyclable, however humanity has entered into a quasi-state where there is no will to recycle something unless there is money involved, or someone else has paid for it to be recycled. Diabetics have to test their blood glucose levels multiple times a day and every time they do, there is garbage in the form of strips of polyester plastic with blood on one end and enzymes embedded in the plastic. Most people thinking about this will stop and say “EW!” but does that make this non recyclable? No, but the answer is also complicated. Recycling today mostly takes reusable or recyclable materials and recycles them into non recyclable materials that undergo a single use then are disposed into a landfill. This way of thinking is very outmoded and outdated. As the new Prime Minister Trudeau has already said, “This is 2015”. To recycle a polyester blood glucose test strip, some added procedures need to be performed, but it can still be recycled. To start with, it must be washed in some fairly harsh chemicals, or autoclaved to ensure anything living on it will be dead before it is further processed. From there a series of carleton.ca chemical reactions will have to be undertaken to reduce the plastic into starting compounds which could then be crafted into another recyclable material. As simple as that sounds, there is money involved in purchasing the chemicals, to getting someone trained in their use, to making sure that maintenance has been performed on the equipment so that it will not break down. Because there is money involved, it is deemed easier to throw it in the garbage. The Students for a Green University club would like the investors involved with UNBC to divest from oil stocks and invest in industries that are deemed safer for the environment. While this is a noble cause, it is outlandish to do so at a point when the throw away generation of forty years ago is making a comeback with actions that are deemed so much simpler than recycling. The more oil based materials are thrown away, the more oil extraction is needed to produce these based on a cheap and proven technology. Yes continuation will lead to the destruction of the human species, but that seems to be far off so politicians don’t think it is important enough to worry about. More and more you can hear the saying “I'll be dead so why should I care”. This attitude needs to change ASAP. UNBC Senate Passes Non-Confidence Motion Grant Bachand Team Member transparent for the Senate to do, and in line with what they are fighting against. he UNBC Senate voted this Wednesday to determine the body’s confidence in current chair of the UNBC Board of Governors, Ryan Matheson. The motion carried, stating that the Senate has no confidence in Ryan Matheson’s leadership. This vote is symbolic and does not have any power to remove Ryan Matheson from his position as Chair of the Board of Governors, but signifies a massive divide within the university's leadership. The vote was conducted in private, and some senators were opposed to the secret ballot. Much of the opposition from members in the Senate were around the secretive methods the Board of Governors allegedly used when picking Moore as UNBC’s next Chancellor. One Senator remarked about this being not open and This comes after a long battle between different groups at UNBC over the James Moore appointment. Many have expressed that the Board of Governors is “out of touch” with the university community. The discussion went on for a long time over this issue. An issue of a “shadowy” group known as the “Senate Caucus” was brought up by President Daniel Weeks. This group was accused of “whipping votes” of senators and not being part of the official Senate, or its processes. The members of the Senate Caucus stated that the group is not aimed to whip votes but to have frank discussions. Members also stated that they were offended by the remarks of the president and asked for an apology. Regardless of what happens next, this will surely go further to divide the institution.