By Nicole Maldonado |Staff Writer|
I’ve been told to be nice when talking about the absent-minded students that don’t recycle correctly on campus. However, some of you need to get a clue.
Everyone needs to be aware of what they throw away in trash receptacles, especially the blue recycling containers around campus.
Every time I walk past a recycling bin it mostly contains trash that does not belong in that bin.
A majority of students do not pay attention or care to recycle. This is a problem and is detrimental to our environment which will pose a problem in the future.
Figuring out ways to keep our planet’s resources in our future will encourage a larger percentage of students to go green on campus by recycling with incentives.
One effective way to help students recycle correctly is to upgrade our trash receptacles. Different shaped holes could be placed on the top of each bin to ensure the right product goes into the right bin.
For example, a thin rectangular shape for sheets of unwanted paper could be implemented outside of classrooms, especially toward the end of the quarter.
I believe we should have all recycling and trash receptacles together in a row so students can choose the correct bin to avoid throwing away random items into the nearest bin.
Another practical idea is to have the Coyote Bookstore collaborate with students and reward them with a percentage off of purchased items based on a point system. The points would account for how much students bring in to recycle at the end of each month.
A competition between departments may also be a fun way to get students and professors to recycle. The winning department would receive a reward at the end of each quarter, and an even bigger prize if winning consecutively for all three quarters.
There are many ways to recycle, and reasons why we all should collectively partake in this effort.
According to benefits-of-recycling.com, recycling saves landfill space, helps save energy, money and most importantly, conserves Earth’s natural resources. This shows that we do to continue our efforts to recycle more, save energy and money for CSUSB and our environment.
This is important to all students because “smarter loading has reduced the number of trips to off-campus recycling centers by more than 50 percent, monitoring of collection bin placement has increased the container collection average per bin by over 30 percent, and regularly scheduled collections have increased staff productivity and maintained recovery from campus sales over 80 percent.” according to the campus facilities web site.
It should be clear that every part counts in recycling on campus, so just remember to think twice about throwing your trash and empty bottles in the correct container to help create a more green Earth for our future.
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