Student Government Board’s environmental committee made a “big stride” this week in organizing… Student Government Board’s environmental committee made a “big stride” this week in organizing a deal with Facilities Management to help the fraternities on the hill recycle party cans, committee chair Thomas Hudzik said.

The average fraternity is allowed three parties per semester, and each party uses 80 cases of 30 cans. After going through 2,400 cans at each party at the nine houses on the hill, about 64,800 aluminum cans were thrown away instead of being recycled last semester.

Hudzik and the environmental committee worked with Facilities Management, which agreed to pick up the cans used by the fraternities for recycling. The fraternities can submit the schedules of tentative party dates so that Facilities Management can collect them the day after.

This was a major step for the committee, which made this project one of its top priorities.

“A lot is being recycled that’s never been [recycled] before,” Hudzik said.

Hudzik and board member Gary Sanderson also met with University administrators to discuss Pitt’s recycling policies and to find out why recycling decreased from 2004 to 2006.

Sanderson said that the numbers, previously published by The Pitt News, were taken out of context. The recycling statistics from 2004 were unusually high because that year, Facilities Management cleaned out the old Posvar apartments, so more material was recycled.

Sanderson said that it’s an urban legend that Pitt does not recycle. In fact, he said he was “really impressed” with Pitt’s recycling program because the company that Pitt works with hand-sorts all recyclables from non-recyclable bins.

“We’re actually really good at recycling,” Sanderson said, “provided students do it.”

SGB Notes