Starbucks, McDonald’s, sodas from the vending machine. As EC has a lenient rule regarding drinks inside classrooms and throughout campus, students take advantage of that and purchase their favorite drinks before heading to class.

Often, bottles, cans, and plastics go straight into a regular trash can. The lack of recycling bins on campus has caused a petition to be made by Associated Students Organization (ASO) members to appeal bigger systems, such as administrations and faculties of EC. “It’s important to have at least a recycling system in this campus,” Sabrina Farah, ASO director of external affairs, said.

“The petition is raising awareness of the lack of recycling here and having the students voice their opinions and see how they’re feeling,” Janae Alvira, ASO director of student and community advancement, said. “Having ASO members going out and talking to students one by one about it is a good way to communicate with them and having them sign the petition is a record of how they actually feel.”

The path for EC to become an environment friendly campus has just started. However, the petition itself will not simply put more recycling bins on campus.

“I think that the problem is that our school has no campus committee with administration delegated to talk about sustainability,” Alvira said.

The sustainability committee exists only within the students in ASO. This makes bringing changes to the campus more difficult, as they do not have the actual power to do so.

Alvira noted that other community colleges in California that have active recycling systems have administrative committees that stands behind on decisions.

“Only students can do so much. It’s good that we have a committee that’s working towards that but without an actual campus committee to back us up, it’s going to be hard,” she said.

Though the goal will be difficult, this does not mean that the petition will not have any effectiveness. Farah believes that there is a realistic chance that the petition will succeed. “I believe that if it gets about 2000 signatures, the petition will get a chance to make it happen.”

However, some students are concerned about the possible downs for the installations. “I feel that some people won’t know that it’s a recycling bin and will just put trashes in there, unless it is thoroughly informed to students”, Justen Minamitani, 19 years old, computer science engineering major, said.

If students have a bottle they wish to recycle, they can walk into the ASO Executive Office in the Student Activities Building, as the ASO committee have their own independent recycling bin. The petition has about 200 signatures so far, and any student can sign this in the Executive Office in the Student Activities Building.