This morning, the USC Sustainability Hub held an E-Waste collection event. Trying to cut down on the amount of electronic waste across the university, USC students were able to donate and recycle any unused electronic devices.
The Sustainability Hub, which was opened early this year and includes a 1,500 square foot space, is focused on helping USC and its students reduce their footprint on the environment.
We walked around the event today to see what students had to say about sustainability and e-waste.
Christopher Convoy, a master’s student in electrical and computer engineering, understands the importance of properly disposing of e-waste.
Christopher Convoy: people just disposing of incorrect locations or putting it with general garbage that could potentially affect that garbage, its ability to be recycled or disposed of it appropriately. I’d imagine if e-waste is just dispose of it in correct locations, that’s chemicals leaking from those products over time would be harmful to the environment.
However, students like David Buckowi, aren’t exactly sure how to solve such a large issue.
David Buckowi: I would say an online program or something to you know, you make people take but again, people don’t really follow or listen to those. So I would say, I would say that was my first initial thought, but I don’t even know how effective that would actually be. I would have to think through probably what would be an effective way to to educate people on e-waste and how to fix it or how to, you know, make it better.
Nonetheless, USC student Adam Romero sees the potential at USC to solve the issue.
Adam Romero: right now, if you look around campus, almost anywhere you look, there’s always some kind of recycling or a bin kind of thing. So installing more of those could be helpful. But even now, wherever you look, there’s still a lot. And other things that could be done is just kind of sending emails about it and stuff because almost everyone sees emails and I read all my emails, so it makes it a lot more effective.
Paiges Tej thinks we all need to be more aware of our carbon footprint.
Paiges Tej: Obviously, I mean the carbon emissions and then, uh, like, uh, I mean you’re not supporting the green go green move, you know, I mean for the planet Earth, right? So yeah, it would definitely affect the footprint of us, the carbon footprint.
For Annenberg Media, I’m Arun Cherukuri