Reporter Volume 25, No.18 February 24, 1994

By MARK WALLACE
Reporter Staff

The Building Conservation Contacts Network will soon be expanding to
the North Campus, where it will continue to improve UB's environmental
responsibility. The BCC Network has already had significant results on
the South Campus, according to Walter Simpson, associate facilities
program coordinator.
	The BCC Network is a network of concerned individuals for each
department, office, floor or building (depending on the size and
organization of each building) who work with UB's Environmental Task
Force (ETF) and University Facilities to promote environmentally
responsible activities in their particular area of the university,
Simpson says. 
	"The reason why the BCC is so important is that after many
years of trying to raise environmental awareness through the ETF, we
decided that what was necessary was a systematic way of working from a
grass-roots level," Simpson says. "And that's what the BCC is."
	The network is already in place on the South Campus, where a
huge improvement has been made in the amount of waste that UB
recycles. But, Simpson says, the BCC Network is going to do more than
just recycling.
	"We're redefining what's been done on the South Campus,"
Simpson says. "We're broadening our effort on the North Campus, and
will then take what we've done here back to the South Campus. We're
going to ask the BCC's to help with many matters of campus
environmental responsibility."
	These matters include encouraging a variety of
energy-conserving behavior, informally monitoring participation levels
and identifying problem areas that impede conservation efforts, acting
as a liaison between particular units and the ETF, the Conserve UB
Energy Conversation Program and the recycling program, and
disseminating UB's environmental policies, Simpson says.
	"UB has excellent environmental policies, but they won't be
implemented without such a grass-roots effort," Simpson says. "BCC
members can do such things as encouraging their departments to use a
type of paper that our purchasing department just discovered, which is
excellent for copy machines, laser printers, offset printing and fax
machines, and which is 100 percent recycled with at least 50 percent
post-consumer waste."
	A "kick-off" meeting for the BCC Network is planned for March
3 at 3 p.m. in the Student Union, Room 330. The meeting will feature
discussion of items such as specific opportunities for BCC members to
make their office more environmentally responsive, Simpson says. 
	The potential of the BCC Network has already been made clear
by the vast improvement in recycling on the South Campus. That
improvement has been greatly due to the work of Matthew Deck,
instructional support assistant for building services and grounds, who
has educated South Campus members of the BCC in the new recycling
system, and William Bagley, maintenance engineer, who directly handles
all paper waste at UB.
	"We initiated the project to increase recycling on the South
Campus a year ago," Deck says. "We changed the sort of materials we
accepted and switched to a new vendor who collects all sorts of
paper."
	Copying the system at SUNY-Brockport, stickers that said
"Recycling Only" were placed on the wastebaskets near the desks of
workers, while non-recyclable garbage now has to be taken to a central
location, Deck says. "The way it used to be done is that people had
their recycling bins in the hall, and their garbage cans in their
office," Deck says. "We've just changed it to the other way around.
	"Now, we get people to participate who don't want to get up
from their chairs. It makes it so easy for everybody to recycle."
	In fact, Deck says that since most of the waste created by
people at their desks is recyclable, the non-recyclable garbage that
has to be taken to centralized locations is a much smaller amount.
	"In February 1993, when we initiated the program, UB recycled
about 6-8 tons of garbage a month," Deck says. "Since August 1993 we
have averaged 40-50 tons of recyclable garbage a month. 20 percent of
UB's waste is now recycled, although our program is still only on the
South Campus. We can get up to 40-50 percent recycling when we expand
to the North Campus."
	Getting that recycling actually done is the job of William
Bagley, who with a staff of students and H.I.R.E. Program workers
sorts through all the paper waste at the University at Buffalo.
Bagley's staff divides the paper into a number of different grades of
paper which are then picked up by UB's current vendor, Ramcol Fibres
Inc., which pays UB varying rates for the different grades, Bagley
says.
	Deck points out that key to the success of the recycling
program has been the fact that "we have at least one contact in every
department on the UB South Campus. Knowing people personally makes a
huge difference in what we do."
	Walter Simpson says that "Those of us on the ETF have been
trying not only to establish environmental awareness at UB, but to
look at what other universities do. What we've seen is that other
universities don't yet have anything like the BCC, which gets
environmental responsibility down to the individual level. UB can
serve as a model of how to make environmental responsibility work."
	People interested in becoming members of the BCC, or in
receiving more information, should call Walter Simpson at 654-3636.