St. Bonaventure provides many opportunities to recycle, so there is no excuse for students not to utilize them.
The Bonaventure community is participating in a project called RecycleMania: a recycling effort to help St. Bonaventure go green. Through March 31, the campus will learn to be more environmentally friendly.
In a rush to dispose of trash or an empty bottle of soda, it may be easy to ignore the triangle of arrows on a nearby receptacle. Paper, glass, metal or plastic can wrongly find their way into a regular trash can.
A number of groups on campus have launched RecycleMania. These groups hope to hike our recycling rates to 20 percent from its current 12 percent.
Students have easy access to recycling on campus, so they should be able to take this initiative and help the environment. Recycling shows concern for something bigger and therefore should be of more consideration in people’s actions.
The careless tossing of recyclables into trash cans has had a devastating effect on St. Bonaventure’s recycling rate, according to campus group Tread Lightly. Tread Lightly promotes environmentally friendly practices and lifestyles through demonstrations, service projects and other activities.
Our 12 percent recycling rate is disappointing. In comparison, the entire city of San Francisco has a recycling rate of 80 percent, according to an Oct. 5 report on waste360.com.
This low rate comes even as St. Bonaventure has been equipped with Zero-Sort recycling services. Instead of separating paper, metal, plastic and glass themselves, students simply have to put anything recyclable into a single bin. The service does the rest.
With this service in place, how can our recycling rate be so low? It’s simply a matter of putting in the minimal effort to separate soda cans from used paper towels.
We need to pay attention to RecycleMania and make recycling a larger part of our everyday lives. If San Francisco stands at 80 percent, we can easily reach a mere 20 percent.
On Valentine’s Day from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., RecycleMania Trivia will take place in the Hickey. The event is sponsored by Casella Waste, ARAMARK and Tread Lightly. Prizes will be up for grabs for winners.
On Wednesday, April 3 at 7 p.m., there will be a “Trashion Fashion Show — Bona’s Edition.” A general interest meeting for the show will take place Feb. 12 at 8 p.m. in the Thomas Merton Center. Tread Lightly and Student Activities will host the unique event.
For weekly updates, make sure to check out St. Bonaventure’s Notice Board, Twitter and Facebook each Monday for the latest on campus recycling progress.
While it’s important to keep up with the RecycleMania events, some simple changes can make a real impact on our campus performance. Hold on to empty soda cans and water bottles and return them for deposit. A nickel in your pocket is far preferable to sending a piece of plastic to a landfill. Dump your scrap paper in the same blue bin as empty juice bottles. At the very least, make some effort to boost our rates.
If the Bonaventure community can take these small steps to sustainability, our recycling rates will improve and we might be able to make the planet a bit healthier.
This editorial represents the opinion of The Bona Venture staff.
