A Sustainable Lancer
This course was fruitful on multiple aspects; a discussion-based classroom allowed students to, well, discuss and ask questions rather than just listening, and the course was geared toward showing students how to be an active citizen and why that is so important, especially in today’s world. This class also helped encourage me to commit to my major- environmental science! We touched on many issues pertaining to the sustainability of the environment considering our resource usage and lack of interest as a community, and ways we can make change happen and spark change in others, for example, Longwood’s going strawless campaign.
One of my favorite activities we did in this class, oddly enough, was going around and creating a GPS map of the exact locations and numbers of trash cans and recycling bins around campus, as well as looking in each can and photographing the contents. This allowed us to see which bin setups had more mixing of trash/recycling and which were separated more accurately. We split into groups and covered different sections of campus, making sure to note where recycle cans and trash cans are paired together and where in some places there may be just a trash can. In some places, there’s two trash cans next to each other and no recycling bins in sight. This project also sparked my attention in realizing that as a school, where a crazy amount of paper is used as a crucial part of most, if not all classes, many dorm buildings are lacking paper recycling bins. Many of the bins we do have are much smaller and often in less-convenient locations than trash cans, which makes much more of a difference than I realized. The difference of a few extra steps deters way too many people from doing the right thing! Overall, we got to analyze for ourselves all the factors that go in to getting more people to recycle and how simply shifting a bin or putting out a sign that defines what can be recycled makes an impressive difference in participation.