Coffee Corner: Living for the future
By Michael Leyva
Q:What sustainability practices do you implement in your life that affects you the most?
“I shop vintage, I recycle clothing. I think we live in a society of consumerism and we always want something new when there are things that are old and beautiful as well.”
Jessica Latosa — Dental Hygiene Student
“I wish people were more aware where trash goes, maybe educate ourselves on what goes in trash and what goes in recycling. I don’t like to throw away plastic bags, I reuse them if I go grocery shopping. I also own an electric vehicle, I feel that it helps not using gas so much.”
Kiana Stanfield — Student
“I stopped using plastic straws, I use metal or cardboard. I like to recycle so I separate plastic, cans, and glass.”
Jacob Cervantes — Student
“Save up alot more [money] for that. It’s better to switch to a system that will be better in the long term just to make sure there isn’t a point where everything starts to fail. If you dedicate the saving up for getting solar panels or other things you can do to help. Dedicate time to saving money for it, you can budget.”
Jacob Mumford — Student
“I personally don’t drink any soda or drinks that come in cans, but my dad is obsessed with LeCroix drinks, and so we always try to recycle those. We just started composting and just trying to reduce our carbon footprint in the world.
It is easy to fall into doom, like why even try and be sustainable when there are mega corporations who are throwing tires into the middle of the ocean. I feel like if enough people like Greta Thunberg and other activists get people in the higher ups to notice the actual issues some substantial change will actually happen for sustainability.”
Cameron Douglas — Student
“We actually use a Brita pitcher filtered water system, so we use those and try to refill water bottles. We try to reuse silverware and bowls instead of plasticware as much as possible. In our break room and at our events we try to reuse utensils and things that we can wash to keep it more sustainable. We participate in the campus wide recycling for bottles, cans, plastic, and paper. Plain ole paper gets recycled, so they actually pick that up. We make sure that we send in our toners with HP when we are through with those because they will actually give us a free shipping label if we want to send those in to get recycled so they don’t go in the trash.l Would love to see some kind of battery program here at PCC if there’s not already one, because I’m not aware of any program that we have for recycling batteries or disposing of them safely. I don’t know what the institution is doing. It’d be nice to get a grip on that.”
James Bull — Pathways FYE
“We store the old oil in the steam room and a storage room in the back of the garage. When they get full, I call CleanTech Environmental, they come, they suck it up, and take it away to recycle it. Douglass Cook owns a Volkswagen Bus that we are going to convert into an electric vehicle. Our EV class made it into a project. We will gut the bus and install an electric vehicle kit. We are just waiting on shipping.”
-Rowena Chan Lab Technician Automotive Technology
“I think it’s kind of gloomy, based on the type of people in the world right now. We’ve seen with the pandemic even based on direct statistics, with how things are going, dangers to society, even health causes people don’t always take it seriously, even take steps to practice self health care. Right now the world isn’t entirely ready for that conversation but it doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be introduced. Once we see more impacts on the environment closer to home I think that’s when people won’t be able to deny it. This school is great, they give out tote bags so I’m always carrying that to the grocery store in order to reduce my use of plastic.”
-Janessa Larsuel — Student
“It’s definitely a possibility that we can come back, it is kind of gloomy at the moment I think, but there’s still hope. For me I try to reduce my use of plastic so canteen instead of plastic bottles. Reducing my use of plastic for me has had the most impact.”
-Christian Cook — Student
“I try to not use so many plastic water bottles so I try to reuse and refill my canteen everyday. I got it on Amazon. Throughout my daily life if I’m ever eating or have any trash I always feel guilty throwing it away, because I know it’s not going anywhere good, so I always throw away all my trash at home. I also never litter. I think the school gives out too many water bottles. I think they should come up with a more reusable version like having gallons to refill water bottles.”
Hanna Gutierez — Dental Hygiene Student
“For me sustainability is about recycling. So definitely not using plastic bottles, more like reusing stuff like masks. For food not really asking for plastic bags, and taking your own plates and all that.”
Ken — Computer Science Student
“As technology gets better, I think a move to taking notes digitally has become a lot more useful. I like to use my table when I’m taking notes in class to reduce paper usage.”
Briana Akopian — Business Administration Student
“Being sustainable is something you have to think of on a micro level, one of our biggest things is not giving plastic bags. We don’t give them automatically, but we usually wait till people ask for a plastic bag. We give out way less bags than we did before.”
Paul Blackwell — Manager of the Bookstore at PCC
