Eastern students have a reason to recycle other than preserving the environment, said Allen Rathe, recycling director.

Recycled materials are resold and the money is used primarily for the students’ benefit.

“We don’t deal in trash,” Rathe said at Wednesday night’s Student Senate meeting. “We deal in a commodity. By selling the products we recycle, we lower students’ tuition and cut costs. Trash is not valuable, but commodities are.”

One of the commodities Rathe spoke of was cardboard. Recycled cardboard sells for about $80 per ton, and recycled materials sales help pay for student salaries and scholarships.

Rathe said that in 2006 alone, Eastern recycled about 283,650 lbs. – just over 128 tons – of paper, cardboard and newspaper. The material was later resold instead of being sent to landfills.

The recycling program began in 1992 with the aim to reduce waste going to landfills by 40 percent by the year 2000. Since then, Eastern’s recycling program has won more than 10 awards for its efforts, including five Partner of the Year awards from the Environmental Protection Agency.

Rathe was asked during his presentation why Eastern’s dining centers use plastic foam instead of washing plates.

“Simply put, it was decided that using Styrofoam was cheaper than using up water for washing,” Rathe said. “It’s not as good for the environment since that stuff ends up in the landflls, but a lot of the time it’s about finding that happy medium between cost and recycling.”

In other business, the senate passed the resolution declaring its support for Eastern’s recently created Suicide Awareness Initiative. The resolution was passed without opposition, drawing enthusiastic comments from several senate members.

“It’s something that needs to be brought to the forefront of our attention because nobody talks about it,” said Megan Ogulnick, senate member.

Levi Bulgar, student executive vice president, plans to bring a review of what he talked about at last weekend’s Illinois Board of Higher Education Student Advisory Committee meeting. He said the topic of raising suicide awareness was also brought up then.

“It’s apparent that this is becoming a bigger and more important issue statewide,” Bulgar said.

Senate members Jeff Melanson, Isaac Sandidge and Megan Ogulnick headed the initiative.

The program will have its first two meetings at 7:30 p.m. Monday and at 8 p.m. Tuesday in the Oakland Room of the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union.

Adam Martinelli, senate speaker, also reported Wednesday night that after working together with Ceci Brinker, director of student life, they have found someone to work on Student Government’s Web site.

Martinelli declined to disclose the webmaster’s name; however, he said the new Web site is to be updated by Wednesday.

Several upcoming reports and proposals are in the works to be presented at next week’s senate meeting.

Levi Bulgar will present what was discussed at last weekend’s IBHE-SAC meeting, and a recycling event called Trashformers is being prepared for legislation next week.

Student Senate meets at 7 p.m. Wednesdays in the Arcola/Tuscola Room in the union.