Cutout hearts encourage recycling

A collage of hearts will be placed outside the campus bookstore in the art exhibit space beginning Feb. 27 to conclude a week dedicated to recycling from the heart. In a combined effort with Mountain Lion PR (MLPR) and the Office of Sustainability, the first of what they hope to be many ‘Recycle the Love' events will take place in order to increase awareness of and involvement in the sustainability movement by reaching out to local children.

The Office of Sustainability is a recent client of MLPR, and the idea for the event was a group effort among its members. As emphasized by Michelle Kissler, a member of the Office of Sustainability, "The collaboration of efforts from their [MLPR's] expertise on creative outreach and our office's resources will make a great team." According to James Burge, MLPR's President, "Our club is working hard to coordinate pretty much the entire event. We have created flyers, used some Facebook tools and we are also creating the red boxes ourselves."

Twenty red boxes will be placed in various locations on campus and will include red heart cutouts in each box's side pocket. Students are encouraged to write a message of love on these hearts and deposit them in the boxes so they can be delivered to the children at White Oaks Academy and UCCS' Family Development Center. Additionally, hearts will be handed out to students by members of MLPR throughout the week. A total of seven MLPR club members are assisting with the campaign and hearts will be collected until Friday, Feb. 18.

As explained by Burge, "After we collect all the hearts we will take them to the schools and allow the children to write a love message back in response to what the UCCS student wrote. This way the love shared between the two will be recycled."

Due to the young age of the children, Burge furthered, teaching the symbolism of the hearts might be difficult. In order to combat this, plans have been made for Linda Kogan, the Director of Sustainability to give a "brief overview of recycling and give them an activity" during the visit.

The idea behind this event stemmed from the realization that while the need to recycle is a pressing issue and one that most everyone agrees with, very little action ever takes place. "Our club believes this will be a great way to get students physically involved in the act of sustainability," Burge said. Also, by involving adolescents, it will encourage future sustainability efforts and practices.

Kogan further emphasized, "This type of event is important because it does two jobs: Teaches future generations the importance of recycling from an early age, and also educates adults about the purpose of practicing small acts of sustainability. Awareness among the public is something is continuing to grow, but action is something that seems to be lagging." Also mentioned by Michelle Kissler, an employee of the Office of Sustainably, this year's addition to the RecycleMania campaign "will impact the efforts to reach our zero-waste goal."

White Oaks Academy, as Burge explained, was chosen because his nephew attends the facility and his sister-in-law teaches there as well. It was important to include the Family Development Center because of its proximity to UCCS and the hope that it "would increase the chances that they would come to campus to see the collage," Burge said.

The hearts will be delivered to the Family Development Center at 10 a.m. on Feb. 25 and the children's responses will return in the form of one large heart collage. The collage will be up from Feb. 27- March 3. As emphasized by UCCS senior Joseph Casias, "Through events like this one, students will become engaged in more acts of sustainability."