Students may be sitting on recycled paper soon.

NIU is “looking into park benches made of recycled paper for the Martin Luther King Commons,” said Fern Wernick member of the environmental ad hoc committee.

NIU is targeting April 1 as the start of a pilot program for recycling in five university buildings.

The five buildings that will start recycling mixed paper are Altgeld Hall, Lowden Hall, Swen Parson Hall, Founders Memorial Library and Montgomery Hall.

“Even when classes are not in session, these buildings operate,” Wernick said.

The pilot program will be evaluated for its success, she said.

The program focuses on paper only because “the buildings are not (picking up) cans, newspapers or computer paper because the Student Association is already picking it up,” Wernick said.

The university is already using recycled copy paper and the University Bookstore also will start to sell recycled paper pads, she said.

The committee is tentatively designating Sept. 7 as the day when community and NIU organizations can come together to clean up the Kishwaukee River.

The program would “get individual community organizations to adopt a section of the river,” said 7th Ward Ald. Jeff Monroe, a committee member. Each organization would then clean up that section of the river, he said.

“I think the council would be very supportive of it,” Monroe said.

In other business, committee member Marcia Beachy said litter is a problem in the Greek Row area.

Each house agreed to pick up litter 15 minutes per week, she said.