HAPPY EARTH DAY!

For those of you who don't know, I kind of pride myself on being a bit of a liberal hippie freak.  Even though Alaska is one of the reddest states out there (Palin?!), it's also one of the most environmentally conscious.  We're not always protecting the environment, but due to our general proximity and hot-button oil-drilling issues, the environment is always a hot spot in the news.  Anyway, I'm one of those people who tells my friends to recycle and hates bottled water.  I'm not perfect though, the furthest my involvement goes is being on the email list for Green Campus.

Since today is Earth Day (and this week is Earth Week, and April is Earth Month...) I thought I'd list out a few of those "easy things that can save the world."  They're obvious, but most of us just don't take the time--myself included. Maybe you'll consider one or two?

Recycle.  Uh, duh.  There are recycling bins in every building of this campus: dorms, dining halls, you name it.  It's single stream recycling, so that means all you have to do is dump any kind of plastic, glass, paper, aluminum into one easy bin.  We all love that feeling of throwing away a big bag of empties-- just throw it in the right bin.  Remember all the homeless guys with shopping carts picking up thousands of cans off the quad on Spring Weekend?  Yeah, they were making bank from the 5-cent deposit fee.  But they were also recycling.  And come on, if they can do it, we can.
The recycling bins in the Cave and the Bistro are also some of the most under-used.  You can pretty much put anything in there, and it's all very simply explained on the posters above.  Empty yogurt cups, plastic salad dishes, forks, spoons, knives, soup cups, can all go in there.  Yet we all just bunch up the table's trash and throw it away.  Boo, I think we are better than that!

Shut Stuff Down!  You use a lot less energy if you do simple things like unplug your appliances and turn your lights off.  When your lamps, hair dryers, microwaves, etc are off but still plugged in, they are still seeping up electricity.  You can leave the fridge plugged in, though.  Don't forget to shut down your laptop and other electronics completely to save battery life and therefore electricity.  These things seem like a no-brainer but it takes that extra second of effort.

Reuse.  For God's sake people, stop buying bottled water!!  I saw a "special" at Mather the other day: "Use six meals to buy 13 bottles of water!  Save a couple bucks."  Why do you need thirteen bottles of water??  Buy one, and fill it up again!  It saves the hassle of going to find a new one, anyway. Not to mention the fact that some god-awful percentage of the world lives without access to clean water, while we spend billions of dollars on the "designer water industry."
 Same goes for coffee cups and paper bowls: use a mug, or a tupperware for your late-night Easy Mac.  Yeah, you'll have to wash it.  Sucks.

There's a lot of easy options out there.  I'm not trying to sound preachy--but I guess I am.  Do we not care about the world at all?  It's easy to check out and just hope someone else will clean up the mess.  But college kids are supposed to be some of the most self-righteous, holier-than-other generations people out there.  We all know that we're smarter than our parents anyway. If not us, who's gonna do it?

Visit www.earthday.org for anything you could possibly want to know about greeny stuff.