Recycling – What have you done for your environment lately?

By Jessica Zelling
Senior, Journalism Major

College students have very busy lives with classes, work and parties to attend. Recycling might not be on your agenda of things to do today… But should it be?

The Earth provides us with water to drink and air to breathe everyday, and being that it is Earth Month, we all should do something to give back. Did you know that Americans throw away enough glass bottles and jars every two weeks to fill the 1,350-foot towers of the former World Trade Center? But if every person did just a small act, the results would be significant.

The 3 R’s of Recycling
The United States is currently the No. 1 trash-producing country in the world. This means that 5 percent of the world’s population is producing 40 percent of the world’s waste. If facts like this make you want to “go green,” there are three R’s to consider when helping the environment. No, they aren’t reading, writing and arithmetic – but rather reduce, reuse and recycle.

Reduce – One thing you can implement is reducing what you already use in your everyday life to save materials and energy. Doing something as simple as turning off lights, fans and air conditioners when you leave your house can save a significant amount of energy over time. It will also help you save money! Here are a few things you can do to reduce:

When you brush your pearly whites, make sure to turn off the water. Doing so may save up to nine gallons of water every time you brush.

Live by the phrase, “If you don’t love it, do without it.” It takes an entire forest (more than 500,000 trees) to supply Americans with their weekly Sunday newspapers. Since the Internet is now the most popular way for students to get their news, unsubscribe from the newspaper that probably serves more as a coffee table decoration than a place to get the facts. Imagine how many trees could be saved!

Plan on carpooling to your classes with your friends and neighbors. Most cars on the road are transporting only one person. We have so much extra room in our 140 million cars in the U.S. that everyone in Western Europe could ride with us to class if we wanted!

The next time you’re assigned a long research paper, make a few quick adjustments to it. Change the default margins of 1.25 inches to one inch, and reduce the font size by one point to 11. Also, if teachers will let you, single space your documents. By doing so, your 10-page research paper can be reduced to just four pages. Multiply that number of saved sheets of paper by ASU’s 50,000 students, and you’ve just saved a lot of trees!

Reuse – Reusing items you already have in and around your house helps to save valuable resources. With websites like eBay and craigslist, people are already reusing items that would have otherwise been tossed. However, a lot more that can be done beyond Internet buying and selling.

It’s time to 86 the plastic grocery bags and get yourself a reusable canvas tote to take with you the next time you go to Safeway. Plastic bags that end up in landfills can stay there for thousands of years because plastic doesn’t decompose. Because so many designers are getting involved with this “green” concept, you can now get a fun tote to fit your style. Bhappybags.com has many to choose from – and they’re made right here in Arizona.

The next time you think about tossing your ink cartridge in the trash when it runs out, take it to the MU instead. The staff will refill your cartridges for you at a cheaper price than buying a new one. Doing this will not only save the cartridge, but also your checkbook!

College students are often avid coffee and water drinkers, and if you’re one of them, think about how many Starbucks’ cups and plastic water bottles you go through in a single day. You can make a huge difference by just getting your own mug and water bottle to reuse. If every American household recycled just one out of every 10 plastic bottles they used, we’d keep 200 million pounds of plastic out of landfills every year.

Sigg is a Swiss company that claims to make “the world’s toughest water bottle.” They have a special lining on the inside of every bottle that makes it taste and scent neutral. You can enjoy any beverage without the lingering trace of the last drink you had. Sigg gives 1 percent of all its sales to environmental causes, and the bottles are 100 percent recyclable after use.

Recycle – Recycling, the process of taking a product at the end of its useful life and using all or part of it to make another product, is the most important of the 3 R’s.
Recycling has two key components to it. First, it keeps valuable materials like paper and aluminum out of landfills so they can be reused instead of wasted. Second, it prevents hazardous materials and chemicals from ending up in landfills, which could contaminate the soil and eventually leak into our drinking water.
Students should already be dropping their soda cans in the blue recycling containers around campus, but don’t forget about the less conventional recyclable items. You might have to go a little bit out of your way, but with many drop locations in the Tempe area, recycling should be included on your green to-do list.

Things you should recycle:
Paper, newspapers, cardboard and magazines – Your old textbooks and research papers can all be reused. Also, take a look at things before you toss them in the trash. A lot of items that you buy come in plastic shrink-wrap or a cardboard box — those are all recyclable as well.
All plastic and glass bottles, as well as aluminum cans - Recycling one single beer can from the party the night before saves enough energy to run a TV for three hours, or the length of an ASU football game. Imagine what a 30-pack could do!

Computers – Electronics are not something you might think of to recycle, but they are made of materials that can be toxic to the environment if they are thrown away. Recycling electronics such as computers, allow the parts to be broken down and made into something new. Epson has a recycling program where they take computers, printers and scanners to a licensed recycling facility, where they are broken down and distributed to the right mills for further processing. Other companies that offer recycling programs include Apple, Dell and Hewlett-Packard.

Cell phones – With new technology such as iPhones and BlackBerrys, cell phones are rapidly becoming out with the old and in with the new. The next time you upgrade your phone, take your old one to Staples. The company recycles all phones and pagers donated to them, and the proceeds generated will go to various environmental organizations.

Batteries – Each year Americans throw out almost 180,000 tons of batteries. Having batteries in landfills can potentially pollute lakes and streams, expose the environment and water to lead and acid, and can cause burns or danger to your eyes and skin. The next time you go buy AA batteries for your remote, try rechargeable ones. They last a long time, and will save you money in the long run.

Helping the environment really does happen one person at a time. If everyone went out of his or her way to do just one thing on this list, it would make a huge difference. It might be hard to understand the full effect we can have by helping Mother Earth, but we will leave you with the facts of how we are wearing on her:

• In a typical day on planet earth, humans will add 15 million tons of carbon to the atmosphere, destroy 115 square miles of tropical rainforest, create 72 square miles of desert, eliminate between 40 to 100 species, erode 71 million tons of topsoil, and increase their population by 263,000