Pfeiffer Dining Hall has been recycling, in some way, for a long time: Monday’s fried chicken is Wednesday’s chicken noodle soup and Friday’s Cajun chicken salad.

Yet Pfeiffer just began a new kind of recycling, the right kind of recycling. This month Pfeiffer finally began recycling food packaging. Given the high traffic and food intake at Simpson’s dining hall, it’s logical to recycle the packaging. This is a fantastic – though late – step towards a more eco-friendly campus.

However, the reasoning behind this measure isn’t completely sound. Dining services began recycling because the city required it, not to help the environment. The landfill Indianola shares with Winterset is too full, waste intake needs to be reduced, and Pfeiffer wasn’t recycling at all. It was a logical place to start.

In this case, the ends do not justify the means. Dining services shouldn’t have been forced to begin recycling, it should have begun the effort out of sincere desire to be environmentally friendly.

Caring for the environment should be an inherent quality of Simpson College. No department should have to be forced into it by outside agencies. The Simpson community almost automatically tries to do good for the community, so it should be equally concerned about doing good for the environment. Just as Simpson not-so-subtly encourages volunteer work, it should encourage recycling efforts.

Simpson doesn’t currently have a strong policy on recycling. If a policy like this did exist, recycling would have been instituted at Pfeiffer much sooner. A school-wide recycling policy should be considered.

Until then, departments can continue to be wasteful until outside authorities tell them otherwise.