Activists protest newspaper inserts
Eco-Action calls for for conservation

By SETH WILBERDING
Collegian Staff Writer

Waving signs and chanting slogans, a small group of activists urged students to sign petitions yesterday at the campus gates to end the use of advertising inserts in the campus newspaper.

Members of the student environmental group Eco-Action cited paper waste and unneccesary mess as reasons to stop the inclusion of inserts in The Daily Collegian. The protesters called for a boycott of businesses that use the inserts as an advertising medium.

But Ed Simonson, manager of Papa John's, 1341 S. Atherton St., one of the businesses that uses the inserts, disagrees that the advertisements are wasteful.

"We've had good coupon redemption in response to our calendar," Simonson said, referring to an insert that ran in the Collegian. "People haven't been throwing those away."

Both Eco-Action members and Collegian business staff identified student negligence as the reason for the waste. The majority of the removable advertisements are tossed aside by students and end up on the floor of some University buildings such as the Willard building and the HUB, protestors said.

"With 19,000 inserts, it's obvious that most of them just fall on the floor," Eco-Action member Scott Yeager (junior-environmental engineering) said.

Eco-Action members have met with Collegian business staff members in an attempt to reduce the waste.

"We want to concentrate on the students and encourage them to either dispose of the inserts properly or recycle them," Collegian Business Manager Danielle Gray said.

Signs encouraging students to dispose of inserts will be posted on Collegian distribution boxes throughout the University, Eco-Action member Christy Balogh (junior-chemical engineering) said. The Collegian plans to publish accompanying ads telling students to recycle every time inserts occur in the paper, Balogh said.

Gray said that the way to reduce the amount of inserts in the Collegian is to write to the companies themselves.

"We don't solicit advertisers to run inserts in the paper," she said. "The advertisers come to us as their choice."

Gray added that all inserts use at least partially recycled materials in their production.

"This is not an environmental issue, other than the fact that students are not recycling," she said.