MU graduate receives grant to promote recycling

By Anton Berkovich

Published Sept. 9, 2008

Two of Columbia's parks will see new recycling bins installed because of a graduate's senior capstone project.

Last Tuesday, Columbia City Council approved to appropriate $4,800 towards a proposal titled "Seasonal Beverage Recycling Project." MU graduate Kiersa Toll, who was a general studies major with a focus in waste reduction, proposed this project last year. The council's funds will be matched with $4,721 from the Mid-Missouri Solid Waste Management District.

The proposal will put recycling bins at Albert Oakland Park and Cosmopolitan Recreation Area. According to the bill on the City Council's Web site, the project will be implemented immediately.

Toll said the grant will be part of a long-term project to eventually install recycling bins in all of Columbia's parks. She became frustrated when taking her children to soccer fields on Saturday mornings and she would see trashcans overflowing with bottles that would end up in a landfill.

Toll does not believe the project will have a large effect on MU students because of the bins' locations, but rather, will have a larger impact on the city as a whole.

"I really wanted to do a capstone that would impact my community," Toll said.

While at MU, Toll was a member of Sustain Mizzou, a student group that works to promote recycling on campus.

Sustain Mizzou President Patrick Margherio said the project will, in the long-term, have an effect on Columbia.

"As far as Columbia goes, I think it will have a really big impact because it will be at all the parks," Margherio said. "Teaching kids at an early age how to recycle, what to look for when you're trying to recycle, it's going to have an impact. It'll be something they grow up with, instead of something they discover in high school or college."

Margherio said in order to promote more environmental issues on campus, individuals will have to become more involved.

"Mizzou will have to turn to outside grants to get start-up money for these projects which we don't have money for right now," he said.

MMSWMD district coordinator Cindy Jolly said grant money is funded by a tipping fee of $2.11 per ton of waste that is put in landfills throughout Missouri. There are 20 districts in Missouri that appropriate grants, and MMSWMD includes eight counties.

Toll now works at the Missouri Recycling Association, and said she chose her focus at MU because she was interested in studying what motivates people to, or not to, recycle.