Convenience key to student recycling
College students tend to live disposable lifestyles — we throw away a lot of stuff a lot of the time. We use paper plates and plastic utensils instead of ceramics because the throwaways are more convenient, and sometimes the serveries do not even give us the option of reusable plates. We go through hundreds of plastic cups at parties every weekend, and we often dump all this refuse in the blue recycling bins Housing and Dining leaves in each room.
Looking at this picture, Rice students do not exactly seem to be an environmentally conscious group. But while we may not be saving every soda bottle until we find a recycling bin, the university recycled more than 24 percent of its waste during the first fiscal quarter of 2006 — 128.22 tons in recycling and composting, according to Facilities, Engineering and Planning’s Sustainability Planner Richard Johnson. Rice has a well-established and effective recycling program in place, especially when compared with the City of Houston’s less than 7 percent recycled-refuse rate. So someone on campus is doing something right.
Rice’s current recycling efforts should be applauded, but they should also be improved, and the effort needs to start in the residential colleges. We have paper recycling in every room, and many of us use the blue bins properly. However, aluminum, glass and plastic recycling bins often sit in one corner of a floor, and walking down the hall to throw out a can is cumbersome — especially in the middle of a take-home test or a game of beirut.
This system pits our desire to be environmentally conscious against our desire for convenient waste disposal. It also helps to explain why nearly 74 tons of paper and cardboard were recycled during the last fiscal quarter, while our recycled glass, plastic and aluminum combined weighed less than five tons. Students will certainly use recycling-friendly resources, but the amount these resources are used depends almost entirely on making recycling just as convenient — or more so — than just throwing things away.
Baker College used its own money last year to buy smaller aluminum, glass and plastic bins that students can keep in their rooms. We would like to see similar efforts across the residential colleges, either through colleges’ individual budgets or through a unified effort of FE&P and the Student Recycling Council. Sustainability is already a reality on campus. Now is the time to make it a convenience.
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