Reducing, Reusing, & Recycling: The Real Truth
“Can I recycle this?” It’s a question that everyone has asked themselves, but what should you do when you don’t know what to do?
Many people put the piece of trash in the recycling, even if they aren’t sure if it can be recycled or not. This is known as aspirational recycling, and it’s doing a lot more harm than good. Items such as disposable coffee cups, greasy pizza boxes, and plastic shopping bags cannot be put in the recycling bin, yet many of these are contaminating recycling loads.
People are creating a lot of trash but not enough is being recycled, and in a society where a majority of Americans have access to curbside recycling programs, products still aren’t being disposed of properly.
Americans also make over 200 million tons of trash every year. The reality is that most of the garbage we create is not being recycled properly, and this amount of waste could be much smaller if more people implemented reducing and reusing more often in their daily lives.
The trash we create is entering our waterways and oceans at alarming rates, with seemingly no end in sight. Ocean plastics are causing the deaths of millions of marine animals every year. Eventually, these plastics breakdown into microplastics which make their way into the food and water that people consume.
The solution to this starts with reducing, reusing, and recycling. Reducing the amount of waste a person creates, less trash will make its way into our oceans, along with reusing plastic products as many times as possible before disposal. Recycling is another major aspect of reducing the trash in our oceans and starts with education about correct recycling habits and making sure to always recycle when possible.
When it comes to recycling, Professor Dani Fischer at Waubonsee Community college says “it’s an uphill battle.” She describes what student recycling habits she sees on campus from an experience in one of her classes: “In sustainability (class) we did a trash audit, and what we did was we just poured out the trash cans in the Science Building to see what people put where, and it’s really a fifty-fifty mix — 50% gets in the right receptacle and 50% doesn’t.”
As a biology professor, she tries her hardest to model some environmentally-friendly traits she would like to see in her students. For example, Professor Fischer eats a vegetarian diet, has a two Prius household, and has energy efficient appliances in her home. She places importance on “offering options that students could use to improve themselves but not being forceful about it because if you make it a situation where people have to change, some people will be reluctant to make that change.”
For anyone looking to reduce waste, her tip is to get something durable to replace single-use plastics. For example, her investment in a Yeti cup has eliminated the need for plastic water bottles and keeps her drink cold for long periods of time, calling it “a win for you but also a win for the environment!”
