Environmental Challenges for ICC and Central IL

Recyclable receptacles are stationed throughout Illinois Central College. / PHOTO: Wes Brooks

Thursday, October 11th, 2018 – 

East Peoria, IL – Illinois Central College promotes itself as a green campus, but is it? The answer is yes; it uses sustainable practices such as getting its energy from renewable sources like solar, water, biomass, and geothermal. They are also an avid promoter of recycling. To back that, 90% of the North Campus was constructed from recycled materials. Illinois Central College also looks after it’s students through sustainable practices. They strategically built the windows on campus to maximize the daylight and views to the outside. Studies have shown that the human body responds better to natural light, which causes higher performance from students and staff.

The Student Association for the Environment, SAFE Club, is currently working to improve the campus even more. Illinois Central College has provided all the materials to recycle, and the SAFE Club is currently working with outside sources to make the discarding process more eco-friendly and sustainable. Also, a large number of students don’t actively recycle and just throw everything in the trash. This is a major problem we are currently facing.

ICC has provided the students with the right materials to recycle. However, they aren’t actively influencing students to recycle. I asked Robert Lawrence, the head of the SAFE Club, what the starting step is to help our campus. He said that, “We need to make recycling posters to put them up everywhere.” He believes that this advocation will help influence more students to recycle.

The efforts by Illinois Central College and its students is awesome, but sadly we are also facing problems from outside forces. The biggest force that we are facing here in Central Illinois is pollution. The Edwards Station power plant in Bartonville is the main cause of this problem. This coal plant’s emissions include dangerous pollutants like sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, carbon dioxide and mercury. All of which are toxic to humans, and all of which are in the air you breathe every day. Thanks to Edwards Station, these chemicals cause respiratory problems and can lead to damage in the nervous systems and vital organs. Edwards also pollutes more than 5 million gallons of water each day, which is affecting people along the river, aquatic life and the agriculture along the Illinois River. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency put out a data report from 2010 that showed the pollution from the Edwards plant contributed annually to: 110 Asthma Attacks, 7 Premature Deaths, 10 Heart Attacks, 4 Incidences of Chronic Bronchitis, and 7 Asthma ER Visits. Since 2010, emissions have risen and so have the amount of health problems in the surrounding areas.

Luckily, our SAFE Club is teaming up with Peoria’s Sierra Club to tackle this problem. The Sierra Club is an environmental group that is fighting for us. They are pushing to shut the plant down, and they are also working to find potential jobs for the current workers at the plant. They want to have jobs lined up for all the workers, so they won’t be unemployed once the plant closes its doors for good.

I believe that these two groups can truly make a change for the better by finding a more eco-friendly way for Illinois Central College students to recycle, and by getting the pollution out of the air we breathe. They are pushing more sustainable ideas and bettering Central Illinois for us. For updates on these projects, check out the Sierra Club’s website at sierraclub.org and the SAFE Club’s website at iccsafe.weebly.com, or stop by a SAFE Club meeting any Friday at 1:00 pm on the East Peoria Campus, room 318E.

By Dylan Simpson, Guest Contributor

Dylan Simpson is a member of SAFE Club, the Student Association for the Environment at ICC.