The rules growing up in my house were pretty simple, do your chores, get good grades, respect your parents' wishes, fight with your sister only when they're not around and there would be no problems. Pretty easy guidelines to follow and I'm sure they're not too far off from what most children grew up having to abide by. The chores were typical, clean your room, make your bed, help vacuum, clean the kitchen after dinner, do the dishes, take out the trash and recycle... Recycle? Yes recycle, for as long as I can remember doing chores, I can remember recycling. It was one thing that while growing up I thought was a completely normal chore. It wasn't until later in life that I realized not everyone had to stuff old news papers into a brown paper bag, collect all of the empty bottles and cans in the house and drag them to the end of the curb in a big blue bin. In fact, I began to realize there were quite a lot of people who had never recycled anything and had no intentions of doing so. Because I grew up recycling, I never really thought of it as doing something "green" I just thought it was normal. It wasn't until more recently that I realized just how important it was to go green and that it meant a lot more than just recycling.
The past several years of my life have seen a lot of ups and downs, I've been on a long, winding road that has lead me to where I am today. Through those ups and downs I have learned a lot about myself and the person I'd like to be. I know now that there important choices to be made in life that become part of what helps define who we are. Just over a year and a half ago, while in an Environment class at USF, I made one of those important choices, I decided to go green. I knew that the environment and our planet's future meant a lot to me and I felt that it was my duty as a human on this planet to make an effort to preserve it. It was an easy decision to make at the time but what I didn't know was how exactly to do it. Since that day I have not been as active in my efforts as I would like to be and I am not proud of that fact. Part of the reason I started this blog was to renew my efforts in going green and to have a way to hold myself accountable.
I have made a decision in my life to live a certain way, and in making this decision I am becoming a person that I am proud to be.
This was one of the first blogs I marked on my to-do list, as it was related to my own interests as well. USF has made a considerable recycling effort, which is more than just green-washing. I wish I could say the same thing about many of the local municipalities. Unfortunately, Florida governments realized how important it was to support recycling even if it was not fiscally possible for them. What do I mean? It's rather easy to see the green-washing. The next time you put out the little blue recycling bin to the curb, watch and see what happens to it. When the recycling truck shows up and someone jumps out to pick up your donations, watch! If your local municipality is actually recycling the driver will separate each recyclable into different bins in the truck. I know Tampa purchased the blue bins, and also the fancy trucks with multiple areas to separate recyclables. However, each time I've seen them pick-up the blue bins, they are dumped into one place.
ReplyDeleteThat's Green-washing. They put on all the pretense to recycle, but are not. The only thing that can get recycled is the "separated products." Putting the glass, paper and plastics in the same place is trash for the incinerator (hopefully waste to fuel), not recyclables for creating new products.
I do believe USF actually has contracts to recycle their collections. I think the glass contract died a few times, but I've not kept up with it. I'm sure the office paper still is profitable. Maybe getting the local cities to get serious about it is worthwhile...
That's a good point, I never thought much about what happens to everything after I put it at the curb. I guess being active in forcing cities and businesses to get serious about recycling is just as much a part in going green as recycling. Although, I was under the impression that the different materials were seperated at the plant, not curb side. I have not done much research on Tampa's recycling processes but everything I've seen about recycling has shown the materials coming in together and being seperated by automated machines. Maybe this is something worth looking into.
ReplyDeleteI would like to thank you for getting me thinking more about this. I know there is a lot I can do at home but what really makes the difference is when whole cities come together on the effort!
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ReplyDeleteUnfortunatly I personally don't go of my way to recycle I will throw a can in a recycling bin if its near by but I wont look to hard to find one. I know that there is great benefits to recycling but I grew up just tossing everything in the garbage and it has stuck with me fortunatly for you, you grew up recycling and have carried on that way of life. I believe that going green or recycling is an important step in saving our planet and thats why I would like to try to break myself of my bad habit and start recycling on a regular basis like you have been able to do.
ReplyDeleteYes there are plant processes that separate some materials. But you might want to look into it more. Any extra processes cost more, so it's always best to keep materials pure from the source. Like with the Phosphate Industry too. They spend a lot to separate the phosphate and concentrate other chemicals in the process. Like fluoride, which is a waste product from their operations. They sell this to fluoridate our drinking water which is an effective way to recycle their wastes. But if you search for research on that you might find that Hitler was the first test test water fluoridation and chlorination to control populations in Germany...
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