The second annual Garbage on the Green is scheduled to take place Nov. 18, and the UNF Environmental Center is abuzz with activity in preparation.

The event will kick off with a campus clean up from 7:30 a.m. to 10 a.m. and will continue from 10:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. with the trash audit and expo.

The trash for the expo will be taken from four buildings on campus, an administration building, an academic building, the food court area and a housing building.

The bags collected will be displayed on the Green, and then volunteers will sort the garbage into categories such as paper, plastic, food, etc., said Colleen Herms, the student coordinator of Garbage on the Green. Once the sorting is done, the trash will be measured, the results will be recorded and a report will be written.

The event is intended to raise awareness about the amount of trash produced at UNF and to show how much of that trash could have been either recycled or reused.

“Students need to be aware that their trash does not just disappear into thin air,” Herms said.

Not only is the intent to show students how much trash they generate, but also to change the way they think about the trash they produce, said Dr. Radha Pyati, director of the UNF Environmental Center and associate professor of chemistry, who admitted she too has to put an effort into thinking about it.

“I want students to think about every piece of waste they generate and to think about what its life cycle could be,” Pyati said.

The first Garbage on the Green was March 8, 2007 and was very successful, Pyati said. UNF is a very active campus and facility services were on board and easy to work with, she said.

Last year, 144 60-gallon bags were collected from just four of the more than 50 buildings on campus, Pyati said.

There will be 24 exhibitors on the Green during the event. They will include Southland Waste and Recycling, Healthy Way Café, which will also be serving lunch, and Grower’s Alliance Coffee, which will be providing coffee all day.

“Essentially, UNF wants to be the greenest campus in the Southeast,” Pyati said. “We are not there yet, but that is our ambition. We have to take small steps.”

E-mail Sadie Seal at [email protected].