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Technotrash cans solution for DVDs, electronic waste by Dick Peterson Public Relations Now that College of Health Professions Dean Danielle Ripich, Ph.D., has moved her school into its newly renovated home on Rutledge Avenue, Mike Schmidt, Ph.D., has the perfect housewarming gift for her—a Technotrash Can.   What better gift to convey the message already evident in CHP’s new digs, a building renovated from the facade of the old Charleston High School and nominated for the Sustainable Charleston Award, than a receptacle for electronic waste.   “Sustainability is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the needs of future generations,” Schmidt said. “It means thinking seven generations ahead.”   It’s the concept of sustainability that Schmidt would like to establish in the MUSC campus lifestyle, but “at a comprehensive academic health sciences center like we are, it is very difficult to introduce the concept of sustainability into the curriculum, because the curriculum is chocked full.   “So, I have to think of clever ways to introduce the notion of sustainability.” Schmidt is director of the Sustainable Universities Initiative at MUSC. Clemson University, the University of South Carolina and the Medical University, during the past six years received about $4.5 million from a private foundation to change the universities’ mindset toward sustainability.   Part of what some call the “green movement,” sustainability means many things to many people, Schmidt said. To some it may mean energy conservation in the construction of new buildings, or a healthy lifestyle—exercise, diet, growing food locally, minimizing use of pesticides—or it may be Schmidt’s idea to reduce the waste stream of techno trash.    “Easy DVDs and the DVDs that self destruct are what caused me to begin writing about products deliberately designed to be thrown away,” Schmidt said about the column he wrote for The State newspaper in Columbia. His commentary ran Aug. 18.   Schmidt reaches for what he calls “low hanging fruit,” when he places his Technotrash Cans in areas heavily trafficked by students—the library has one, and CHP of course, and other areas where students congregate. The receptacles invite the collection of diskettes, CDs, DVDs, video and audio tapes, ink jet and toner cartridges, cell phones, PDAs and pagers, digital cameras, laptop computers, handheld games, CD and MP3 players, and rechargeable batteries.   The company that collects the technotrash reclaims much of it for its huge content of plastic, converting it into diskettes, CDs, DVDs and the plastic jewel cases that protect them. Displaying some of the Technotrash products, Schmidt said, “These are floppy disks they have reformatted and are selling them. And they make CDs that are just as good as the original. As the price of oil goes up, CDs are going to become more expensive again. This is actually a re-writable CD, not a one-time-use one.”   Schmidt says the effort is “but a small step in the great machine that we are trying to turn that is MUSC.” His fear, he said, is that the technotrash program might become too successful and overwhelm university recycling coordinators.   But then, that just might be the sort of happy problem Schmidt would like to solve.     Friday, Oct. 21, 2005 Catalyst Online is published weekly, updated as needed and improved from time to time by the MUSC Office of Public Relations for the faculty, employees and students of the Medical University of South Carolina. Catalyst Online editor, Kim Draughn, can be reached at 792-4107 or by email, catalyst@musc.edu. Editorial copy can be submitted to Catalyst Online and to The Catalyst in print by fax, 792-6723, or by email to petersnd@musc.edu or catalyst@musc.edu. To place an ad in The Catalyst hardcopy, call Community Press at 849-1778.