The three R’s (reduce, reuse, recycle) is a concept taught from elementary age of how to save our planet.
Recycling is a simple way of living an eco-friendly lifestyle. Anyone who visits the UO campus can easily see that it is an institution committed to the green way.
However, ironically, there exists a UO building whose inhabitants do not recycle anything at all. The building is called the Thompson’s University Center and it hosts various UO departments, such as Student Billing Affairs.
When asked about the recycling problem, an employee of the Student Billing Affairs claimed that the lack of recycling is due to the fact the Thompson’s University Center is technically off campus and thus gets overlooked in regards to UO recycling programs.
However the building is reaching out to get Zero Waste in hopes of becoming involved with the UO’s recycling program.
Though it is not good that the center has not been recycling, at least they are trying to expand their access to the UO recycling program.
Yet this situation shows that it is still important to remember why recycling is beneficial and how humans are negatively impacting the environment.
With a realization that even in eco-friendly communities there exists a lack of recycling, it is important to address how recycling is defined. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), “Recycling is the process of collecting and processing materials that would otherwise be thrown away as trash and turning them into new products.”
The EPA also explains the three steps of recycling. The first step consists of collecting, sorting the items at a facility and then sold like any other raw material. The recycled materials can then go on to be manufactured and sold as products.
Thus recycling is an important step in conserving the Earth (what we have left that isn’t covered in our trash) because it keeps materials that can be reused out of landfills and oceans.
Green Living Ideas, an organization that provides information and tips of the eco-friendly lifestyle, point out that the spreading of waste out of landfills can be accidental by natural disasters such as hurricanes. Nevertheless the spreading of waste scatters materials that were not designed to be environmentally friendly (through chemicals, decomposability, etc.) into sensitive ecosystems. The human-made materials are unable to decompose and ultimately hurt the earth and its inhabitants.
Likewise the oceans are being severely impacted by the amount of trash that litters the world. National Geographic reported in January 2015 that, “There are 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic debris in the ocean.” Just imagine how suffocated the earth is now that it is cover in even more human trash.
Overall, this incident with the Thompson’s University Center is an example that there is a lack of recycling even in communities perceived as eco-friendly,
Moreover, it becomes scary to look beyond UO and view the country as a whole: Our future president claims that climate change is not a real human-made catastrophe but instead a lie created by the Chinese to stump manufacturing competition.
The non-recycling Thompson’s University Center and the next President-elect Trump are big reminders that the fight for the environment’s well-being is unfortunately far from being won, whether it be from a lack of access to green resources or from pure ignorance.