I can often be seen around campus digging though trashcans. Well, I don’t really dig, just sort through the surface junk.
No, I’m neither a truly “starving student,” nor am I so deeply in debt that I have to resort to fishing out valuables from trashcans. Instead, I constantly see recyclables, especially bottles and soda cans, sitting on the top layer of the rubbish of our campus trashcans and feel deeply compelled to put these resources, whose true potential has not yet been harvested, in their proper place.
It’s been instilled within me since I was young to conserve and be contentious of limited resources. Although I often lapse in my vigilance in conservation, something as simple as holding onto my garbage until I reach a recycling can doesn’t really faze me.
I’ve taken for granted that everyone has been taught the importance of recycling, either at the grade school level or at home, yet to my utter dismay, people still don’t bother with the simple task of putting their bottles and cans where they belong.
Maybe it’s that people don’t like carrying around their trash. It’s often messy to cart around campus and can become pugnacious on a hot day. But more likely than not, everyone here at Cal State Long Beach has received the recycling-is-good lectures throughout their childhood and would be glad to do so if the damn cans weren’t always full.
The CSULB recycling Web site says there is a phone number that can be called for pickup when recycling bins become full, but that’s an unrealistic expectation for students. Few students would even bother to check the school Web site for information on recycling, let alone for information about when the cans are emptied (unless of course, you’re often seen grumbling down the hall, arms outstretched with dripping, stinking cans in your hands.)
I’ll often carry bottles from the ambiguous blue cans (meant only for paper recyclables despite their vague signage) to the proper black cans (which more clearly state they are for bottles and cans). Or, what is most frustrating, moving a plastic bottle from the top of a full trash can to a nearly empty recycling can that’s near it. For this, there is no excuse.
But I believe in the good intentions of my peers. If the recycling cans weren’t consistently full, they would, perhaps, consider using them. The fact of the matter is, they’re always full and few people (especially those with heavy books under their arms) want to be burdened with one more thing.
The fact that these cans are filling up faster than Facilities Management can empty them is certainly proof of our campus’ devotion to environmental consideration.
Until Facilities Management gets hip to the fact that these cans are never empty and need a more effective means of recyclable disposal, please consider holding onto your bottles and cans until you’re near an empty container.
It’s slightly cumbersome, I know, but my hands are raw from constant washing and my shoes are stained with a strange permutation of different sodas, juices and energy drinks.
Lauren Williams is a junior journalism and political science major and the opinion editor for the Daily Forty-Niner.
