HEALTH 101 Recycling Discussion and Response

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  • What types of recycling programs do you have on your campus and in your community?
  • What can be recycled on your campus?
  • Where can you recycle and is recycling convenient?
  • Does the recyclability of an item influence your consumer choices?
  • What are some ideas you have that could make your own campus less wasteful?

On campus they have a recycling program called STAND which means students taking action in nature’s defense. This was invented on Fairmont State’s campus in 1998 by Dr. Don Trisel who was a professor of Biology. STAND is providing Fairmont State’s campus and roadside cleanup, donating trees on Earth Day, and celebrating national recycling efforts. At Fairmont State we have clean-up competitions, fundraisers, tips, and conferences that people can attend to learn more about why recycling matters. In my community we have large dumpsters strictly for recycling plus we also have a shop where you can take in cans, plastic, metal, etc. and get money for recycling.

Things that can be recycled on campus are plastics number one and number two where can be found on the bottom of your container. Clear bottles and brown bottles and aluminum cans can be recycled. Office paper which can be white or colored, it can have staples and tape and still be recycled. Newspaper and magazine which can also be glossy paper or any other closely similar material and cardboard. Recycling at Fairmont Sate is convenient because there is recycling in almost every building on campus. There are colored signs that tell you what can go where such as plastics have a blue sign, glass (clear or brown) is a yellow sign, any paper, newspaper, magazines, and cardboard have green signs, and then aluminum is a red sign. Most floors of the buildings have a plastic and paper recycling. Glass recycling is only in certain buildings but logically placed. The only inconvenient one I would say is that there is only one aluminum recycling.

I feel like glass and paper influence me more than others because I am always cautious about throwing something like glass into a regular bin if there isn’t a recycling area for it just because it could break and really harm someone. I also always recycle paper because of the environment and how many trees we use by making paper. I think a couple ideas it that we could have more competitions around campus for recycling so the kids would do it more. Everyone loves a good competition. Another idea could be giving kids some more community service hours by going out and picking up trash to help our community. As a college student sometimes, it is hard to find community service that fits well with your schedule so if we had something where we could go out and pick up trash and find more recyclables and take it somewhere, we could get hours for doing that.

Works Cited

Recycle. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.fairmontstate.edu/recycle