Who cares about trash and recycling?
Everyone should care about garbage--especially plastic garbage! According to the EPA only 8% of plastics were recycled in 2010; 28% of HDPE bottles (used to package things like shampoo and cleaning products) and 29% of PET bottles (disposable water bottles) were recycled. Thats right, only 29% of disposable PET plastic water bottles were recycled!Styrofoam is made of the recyclable plastic styrene, however EPS is costly and inefficient to recycle, and most localities do not even offer services to recycle EPS. The recycling number on the bottom of EPS food containers is misleading; it is there to tell you which type of plastic the container is made of (#6), not to suggest that it can be recycled easily. The vast majority of EPS food and beverage containers are not recycled.
The negative environmental impact of needless garbage generation and pitiful recycling rates is already obvious in places like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch--a gyre in the Pacific ocean where plastic waste ends up suspended in the water column, continuously being degraded into smaller and smaller plastic particles that harm ocean ecosystems.
What should Virginia Tech do to lessen it's environmental impact?
Short term:
Make recycling more convenient!- Place recycling bins on campus right next to conventional trashcans--give people a choice between tossing that Hokie Water bottle in the garbage or the recycling!
- Add recycling bins to the trash facilities in Turner place.
Charge for styrofoam to-go boxes in dining halls.
- It costs $0.10 for a plastic water cup, it should also cost a few cents to get your food in a to-go box.
Stop selling bottled water!
- People can easily carry a reusable water bottle, there is no reason to encourage wastefulness by selling water in disposable plastic bottles.
Long term:
Eliminate styrofoam to-go boxes from dining halls entirely.- Styrofoam boxes could be replaced by compostable paper-based boxes. Any additional cost of these boxes could be mitigated by charging a few extra cents to get your food to-go.
- Encourage the use of the eco-clamshell!
Stop selling any beverage bottled in disposable plastic (i.e. bottled sodas, Powerade, juices)
- If people want to consume these liquids, they can easily purchase a reusable beverage bottle from Owens.
