the plastic foam packaging that frequently accompanies consignments to ut laboratories is now creating its way to a recycling centre instead of landfills with the help of financial support from student fees. environmental science and biological sciences senior nicholas kuzola is helping with the effort. he mentioned that the department of chemistry and biochemistry recycled a projected 120 pounds of foam packaging during the second collection monday. styrofoam is a trademark of the dow chemical company on a particular type of plastic foam more usually used in craft applications and construction. karen browning is an associate chemistry and biochemistry professor. last year, along with alumna maria moura, he applied to the ut green fee committee to start the program. the green fee, which utilizes 5 from the fees that each student pays during the spring and fall semesters and 2.50 during summer sessions to support green projects on campus, allocated 7,200 to the project. this fund is utilized to fund plastic foam pickup. browning said that many of labs have a lot of styrofoam, and they didn&rsquot want to throw it away, and finally they got the way to get rid of it. the stuff is brought to the loading dock at welch hall. there, it is then loaded onto a truck which takes it off campus to a dumpster to the pickle research centre located in northwest austin. hdi plastics, which is a recycling company based out of austin, collects the material, when the dumpster is full. kuzola said that hdi plastics melt it down, fill it with a little more plastic, create pellets out of it, and then they sell it back. the green fee intends to support projects that will finally become selfsustaining, and both karen blaney, who is the green fee&rsquos program coordinator, and browning expect that their efforts will be considered fruitful enough by the university that it occurs on a regular basis. however, that depends on the quantity of material that labs need to discard and the economical way of doing that by recycling. blaney said that they are testing the trustworthiness of this logistical process and the amount. no one actually knows how much styrofoam is on campus. source of information httpwww.dailytexanonline.comnews20121203utlabsrecyclefoampackagingusinggree…
