THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Emily Ellis of Free the Planet discusses her group’s report with Ohio State President Karen A. Holbrook. The student organization wants the school to use more recycled paper.

Green may never rival scarlet and gray at Ohio State University, but one student group hopes the color becomes just as famous.

The symbol of environmentally friendly products should become a symbol of Ohio State, says Free the Planet, a campus group dedicated to improving the environment. One place to start is the tons of office paper the university uses each year.

“Ohio State’s impact on Columbus is huge. They need to step up and be a leader in this, just like they are in athletics and academics,” said graduate student Jane Harrison, 21, a member of the group.

Free the Planet demonstrated on the Oval on campus this month and delivered a report to OSU President Karen A. Holbrook on paper usage at Ohio State and other campuses. Holbrook talked with the students for a half-hour and promised to read the report and meet with them a few weeks later.

At the behest of Free the Planet, the school’s business office has been trying for several months to determine how much recycled paper already is used on campus and how the percentage can be increased. While perhaps half of departments order paper through a centralized store, the rest order on their own.

Helen DeSantis, assistant vice president for business operations, said that 44 percent of the $1.7 million in paper products ordered through the OSU store in 2006 had some recycled content. Those products include paper towels, printing paper, toilet paper and tissues.

A task force that includes a member of Free the Planet will begin studying the issue of using more recycled paper. To kick off the effort, the OSU store is promoting recycled printing paper through fliers and e-mails to departments that order through the store.

DeSantis’ office recently started using paper that has 30 percent recycled material; next it’ll try paper with 50 percent recycled fiber and 100 percent recycled fiber. Holbrook’s office also uses recycled office paper.

“We’re looking at converting everything we can to green purchasing,” DeSantis said.

Paper with recycled content costs 28 percent more for the 100 percent, 16 percent more for the 50 percent and 17 percent more for the 30 percent, DeSantis said. But in the context of the department’s entire budget, that’s a small increase, she said.

In the past, the paper’s quality wasn’t as good as virgin paper products; it would jam printers and had a gray cast. But Harrison said that the quality has improved significantly in recent years and the paper slides through printers with ease.

DeSantis hopes her department’s use of the paper will serve as a test market for other departments.

“We have to get people recognizing why it’s important and get the recycled paper in front of them. Probably in a lot of cases the people ordering the paper don’t even think about choosing recycled paper over other paper,” she said.

Harrison would like the university to mandate the use of recycled paper; DeSantis doesn’t think that would work at a place as diverse as Ohio State; instead, she hopes to find employees in every department to champion the cause and encourage its use.

Free the Planet also wants OSU to avoid the use of paper products produced from oldgrowth forests; that’s something the new task force also will look at, DeSantis said.

Other universities have adopted that policy, and some, such as Princeton, use only 100 percent recycled office paper. That was the result of student pressure in recent years.

kgray@dispatch.com

Please do the right thing: a policy of sustainable purchasing on campus makes sense when so much of public policy is about to address the global problem of sustainable resources, global warming, etc. Every little bit helps our lonely planet!

Thank you

Most sincerely,

E.Sorg