Eco-Rep Green Corner: Students compete by recycling trash
So when you go into the trash rooms on campus, what do you do? Do you just throw everything in the first bin you see? Sure, it’s the easiest way to get rid of what you want to get rid of. But think about all the things that you throw out. Are there water bottles in there? Soda cans? Tons of pages you printed out with PowerPoint slides and notes from class? The old Rider News?
What you put in the trash can gets taken out every day by UNICCO, brought to the back of campus, put in the dumpsters and then trucked out to the GROWS landfill in Pennsylvania. This is now the largest landfill in the nation, and Rider contributed over 3 million pounds of trash last year. It will sit for longer than you, your children, your grandchildren and probably your great-grandchildren’s lives combined.
Sure, there are some things we have that just can’t be reused like a tissue or piece of gum, and that is totally understandable, but so many of the things we could be recycling, reusing or not even using in the first place could be prevented from going there.
Rider actually does recycle, but if we don’t sort it, it’s just going to the landfill with the rest of the trash. You have to put your cans and bottles into the yellow bins (that’s number 1 and number 2 plastics, glasses, and metal) and then put your paper and cardboard (minus pizza boxes) in the green bins. It’s simple.
As part of the Presidential Climate Commitment that President Mordechai Rozanski signed, Rider is participating in Recyclemania. We did it last year, but we didn’t do too well because the community didn’t really know what was going on. This year, Rider is taking more steps to help ensure the sustainability of our school into the future. We are participating in the Steven K. Gaski Per Capita Classic this year, which has the goal of recycling as much as possible.
Recycling is extremely simple to do, as long as you know how to do it. Sustainability can be taken in simple steps, and this is the first step we as Broncs can take for the whole community.
Chris Shepherd is one of the seven Eco-Reps recently chosen to represent Rider.
