Kenyon students aid asylum seekers
Instead of just reading and writing research papers, some students in a Kenyon College class are helping real people through their homework.
Nancy Powers, assistant professor of political science at the small liberal-arts college in Gambier in Knox County, has tasked her students with doing research for a nonprofit organization based in Canton.
The Immigrant Worker Project defends immigrants seeking asylum in the country at immigration court in Cleveland. Her students provide background research that could be pivotal in the cases.
"These cases are often decided on a slim edge. A little bit of evidence can tilt the judge's decision," Powers said. "Students are basically finding a needle in a haystack."
The students are assigned a case and are told to paint a picture of what life was like in the person's country of origin at the time they were living there. For instance, if the person is seeking asylum based on domestic abuse, did
But year-round, most of the trash that ends up in the regional landfill could have been recycled, composted or reused, according to the Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio.
That’s partially because the infrastructure needed to reduce widespread waste is still in early stages, said regional planners, local civic leaders and business owners.
Regardless, residents are increasingly demanding services to help them reduce their environmental impact.
So it’s up to local governments and forward-thinking businesses to experiment, said Bexley Mayor Ben Kessler, pointing to his city’s curbside compost pilot program as an example.
“This is a next- generation habit and behavior,” he said.
Next year, for the first time in its history, SWACO plans to release a public policy agenda in the hopes of formally boosting grassroots waste reduction efforts.
“We’ve got a lot of work and a lot of research to do,” said SWACO Executive Director Ty Marsh.
‘ People want the service and it’s not there’
Originally, Bexley officials hoped 300 households would participate in its trial compost program. Almost 400 signed up.
“The interest was way more than we anticipated,” city Service Director Bill Dorman said.
In other central Ohio cities, electronic waste drop- offs, electric vehicle fleets, modern recycling initiatives and energy conservation are becoming standard features of local government and business operations.
City leaders in central Ohio say that’s because their constituents are increasingly demanding eco- friendliness.
“We’re all more aware of the footprint we leave. We all want to do the right thing,” Upper Arlington spokeswoman Emma Speight said. In 2018, that city will roll out a new recycling program featuring larger bins.
“By giving them a big recycling container, we think the instinct will be to fill it up,” she said.
More than 30 communities have signed on to a regional push to adopt sustainable practices at municipal levels, said Rachael Beeman, an associate planner for the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission.
“Central Ohio is growing. We’re going to see up to a million more residents by 2050. That means we have to think more critically about how we use our resources,” Beeman said.
Franklinton Cycle Works, a nonprofit bike shop in that Columbus neighborhood, receives and sorts through a staggering amount of unwanted material.
Each year, people donate more than 1,000 bikes that are then fixed up, used for parts or broken down into recyclable aluminum and steel components.
The shop receives so many old bikes that it ends up shipping a portion of them overseas to Ghana, Executive Director Jonathan Youngman said.
“It’s crazy,” he said. “It keeps those bikes from either ending up in a landfill or sitting in garages.”
Food waste, which makes up almost 13 percent of SWACO’s landfill stream and emits planet-warming methane emissions, is an increasingly popular target of local initiatives.
One group, the Mid-Ohio Foodbank, provides enough food for 155,000 meals each day — 70 million pounds of food a year— much of which is recovered from major grocery stores, food distributors, farmers, hospitals and restaurants.
Leard also receives overwhelming interest at his compost company.
A pilot program near Ohio State University has more than 90 percent participation, he said, and Clintonville residents signed up in droves when he first set up a tent at the neighborhood’s farmers market. Leard said he next hopes to install curbside food waste pickup along the High Street corridor in the Short North.
“The issue now is people want the service and it’s not there,” he said.
For now, ‘ backyard solutions’
In Pittsburgh, composting is a regular feature across the city’s stadiums, universities and convention center.
It makes SWACO’s Marsh jealous.
“That’s an ideal situation. We don’t have the infrastructure here,” Marsh said.
In central Ohio, commercial enterprises, schools and hospitals contribute 60 percent of the landfill stream.
Part of the challenge is that recycling is treated like a commodity, Marsh said. “If a restaurant wanted to do good waste recycling, they have to find their own solution in their own backyards, pretty much.”
Cardboard is only collected because it’s cheaper for companies to recycle cardboard than it is to process raw timber. The same is true of glass and aluminum, but not for yogurt containers and Styrofoam.
That leaves local businesses to tailor their own green solutions.
Vincent Valentino spent 2017 trying to work out where to put Land-Grant Brewing Company’s solid waste — other than in the garbage.
Now, local cattle farmers feed their animals the Columbus brewery’s spent grain. Since March, farmers and gardeners have used 1,200 gallons of LandGrant’s spent yeast as a soil enhancer and compost accelerant.
“If we treat it like trash, we’d create a problem,” said Valentino, the brewery’s sustainability manager. “Right now for a lot of these practices, we’re in the early adopter phase.”
Franklinton Cycle Works also has gotten creative, repurposing library card catalogs and old Victoria’s Secret drawers as storage for bike parts, Youngman said.
There’s no way around it: It takes a fair amount of time and thought for a business to inch toward zero-waste. But it’s an investment with economic and environmental payoff, Youngman said.
“I’m expecting it will become second nature,” he said.