I grew up in the generation that was told to “reduce, reuse, and recycle.” I was never shown any reason to do otherwise, so it became something I took at face value, just as I believed my parents when they told me that an overweight man with a long beard wearing a red and white suit slid down my chimney and left me presents every December 25. As an RPI student and an aspiring scientist, I came to seek a better explanation, which I’m going to share with you today.
The old adage “waste not, want not” has never been more true than it is today. As energy prices continue to rise, more vigilance has been necessary in order to find opportunities to conserve. The past few years have given us tremendous opportunities; I recently replaced the light bulbs in my house with compact fluorescent bulbs, which use about a third of the
energy of incandescent bulbs to produce the same amount of light. I drive a car which gets more than 30 miles per gallon, and, when possible, I carpool.
That covers the “reducing” component, but what about recycling?
The prices vary, but it costs roughly $300 for every ton of garbage that is hauled away by both cities and private companies. Meanwhile, the removal of recyclable materials is done at almost no charge. This means that every time you choose to throw something that is otherwise recyclable (glass, metal, plastic, or paper) in the trash can instead of in a recycling bin, you’re wasting money. If it is on campus, it is costing RPI money; if it is on private property, you’re wasting your own taxes. Not to mention that you’re essentially unnecessarily adding to a landfill somewhere for no good reason and preventing otherwise useful materials from being put to good use again.
This is the column of the RPI Grand Marshal in the RPI student newspaper, so let us focus on how this affects RPI.
Longer showers, propped doors, and leaky faucets cost the Institute more money. The things that you can do to help save money are incredibly simple and range from cutting back on the length of your showers—if you cut back your shower time by five minutes you would save almost 15 gallons of water each time. Turning the water off while you brush your teeth can save up to 10 gallons of water. Reporting a leaky faucet to FIXX can save up to 20 gallons of water each day. Don’t leave the lights on when no one is using them, and of course, avoid propping open your residence hall doors that lead outside, as you will be heating—or cooling—the great outdoors.
But what is your student government doing to help this and why should it matter to you?
The student government-sponsored effort to promote carpooling over Thanksgiving stands to save RPI students—literally—thousands of dollars. Our goal is to facilitate ride sharing, which will result in 1,000 gallons of gasoline being saved. With gas prices climbing past $3.20 per gallon, this goal would involve over $3,000 being saved, money that could be better spent on beer—er, books. This is in addition to wear-and-tear on vehicles that would be avoided and the pollutants that would otherwise go into the atmosphere. An extremely interesting unofficial survey recently found that almost every student traveling within three hours of campus could find another RPI student going to a destination less than 15 minutes away.
Several student senators have also been working on establishing a Sustainability Task Force involving students, administrators, faculty, and staff, charged with addressing issues of waste, energy, and overall sustainability from each of these perspectives. Additionally, these same Senators worked on standardizing the recycling system in our Student Union, so sometime within the next few weeks you may begin to notice that every room has recycling bins and they are all labeled in the same way to allow for the recycling of paper, plastic, and glass.
Now go recycle this copy of The Poly, provided you are finished reading it, and turn off some lights!
If you have any ideas for conserving resources, are interested in going dumpster diving, or you just want to procrastinate with all that homework you’ve got due tomorrow, I am here: gm@rpi.edu.
