Resource management at Mt. Hood Community College got the approval of the City of Gresham this week to become one of Gresham’s GREAT businesses.

The program, Gresham Resource Efficiency Assistance to (GREAT) businesses, is part of an effort the city has put forth to reduce the amount of waste produced by businesses and to help them implement new methods of management.

John Pitman, science lab coordinator and recycling coordinator, said, “It’s a certification that we have been working on for about a year with the City of Gresham. It means that we are looking at all angles of environmental and ecological awareness on campus and controlling all environmental and ecological factors that we can control as a business.”
The effort included many additions to the program already in place.

“Initially, when the city came out and did this, the person who did it was really gung ho, someone whose expectations were not realistic,” said Pitman. “We had a grant with METRO where they furnished us with a new dishwasher in the cafeteria. The new dishwasher is eco-friendly by using the least amount of water and controlled amounts of soap. It uses a biodegradable soap that is not harmful to waste water going out in our waste stream. So, that was something we accomplished.”

The college also placed signs above storm drains. “That encompasses our waste water, making sure we have signage on our storm drains and such, signs that say this dumps into a creek so don’t dump down waste,” Pitman said.

“The cosmetology had no functional recycling for all the plastic bottles, their nail polish stuff, and all the things they had there, so they were able to get together with the recycling program [who helped] provide them with the containers and give them awareness of what they could recycle. They had a lot of recyclable material.”

The city also requested that MHCC form a “green team.” This involved forming an email list that served as a forum for ideas and a way to coordinate recycling and waste management efforts throughout the college. “It’s a comprehensive group that meets once or twice a term to talk about what’s going on,” said Pitman.

The college also placed signs above storm drains. “That encompasses our waste water, making sure we have signage on our storm drains and such, signs that say this dumps into a creek so don’t dump down waste,” Pitman said.

“The cosmetology had no functional recycling for all the plastic bottles, their nail polish stuff, and all the things they had there, so they were able to get together with the recycling program [who helped] provide them with the containers and give them awareness of what they could recycle. They had a lot of recyclable material.”

The city also requested that MHCC form a “green team.” This involved forming an email list that served as a forum for ideas and a way to coordinate recycling and waste management efforts throughout the college. “It’s a comprehensive group that meets once or twice a term to talk about what’s going on,” said Pitman.

One of the green team’s missions was to obtain the GREAT business certificate. The green team hopes the certification will help them find new resources and ideas.

The green team worked with the CASS program create bilingual signs for the recycling program, and a green team member is helping in creating a Russian translation as well. “We tried to reach the most diverse group we could,” said Pitman, acknowledging that signs with all the world’s languages would be ideal but impractical.

This cooperation and effort was the final element in obtaining the certificate, Pitman said. “We were waiting for the president of the college to say ‘yes this is a great thing,’ but that hasn’t happened yet. That would be really, really great. The city of Gresham, at first, said we had to have that before they would give us any recognition for having a green team.”

Pitman invited city officials to attend green team meetings, the team set goals and began to meet them. “That was one of the last elements we had to complete.” Pitman said the recycling program continues to grow. “We never used to recycle plastic bags, now we do. We didn’t recycle Styrofoam, block Styrofoam or packing peanuts, now we do.”

One of the future expansion efforts may include a community day where Mt. Hood’s recycling program would accept recyclables from outside the college. “It wouldn’t be hazardous waste recycling, because we don’t have the facilities to do that,” Pitman said.

Another future requirement from the city’s program is an effort to recycle food scraps. The Science Club has been working on a compost site and will work with food services to compost most of the waste from the kitchen. Pitman said that the meat products were not appropriate for the compost site. “It’s just something you want to avoid putting in there.” Because of this, it is unlikely that student scraps will be composted.

“It’s never going to work, they (the students) are always going to put there meat in there,” said Pitman.

The recycling program is self-sufficient. Paper is sold to Smurfit for $15 a ton and refundable cans and bottles are taken by Pitman to Fred Meyer to be cashed. The program also recycles printer cartridges for a refund, but there are many regulations involved, and not all toner cartridges are refillable.

Recyclers, who make $10 per hour, are paid with federal work study money. “They’re digging through garbage,” said Pitman, “You have to give them some incentive to go do that stuff.”

The college’s only contribution to funding the program is a $200 stipend to Pitman for running the program. “It’s a lot of stress and extra work to do it, but I don’t mind,” he said.