Recently around the globe, there has been a big change in the way humans around the world think about energy and water use. The threat of global warming is looming, and people need to begin altering the way we use our resources. Many changes have taken place around the University of Central Florida to make the property greener and more sustainable, such as adding recycling containers and starting a community garden. All of these events around campus show that students and faculty really care about the environment and that ‘going green’ isn’t just a fad.
UCF started the recycling process in 2005 with a miniscule five percent recycling rate. In 2006, the university entered in RecycleMania, which is a friendly competition and standard for college recycling programs to promote waste reduction activities, which started a spark in the dismal rate raising it to eight percent. As each year goes by the idea of recycling on campus gets more popular, according to last year’s twenty eight percent average. According to the University of Central Florida’s recycling website, UCF Recycles accepts aluminum cans, plastic, mixed paper, wooden pallets, cardboard, hard/soft cover books, magazines, batteries, electronics, and scrap metal and aluminum. Also, each move in/move out session furniture that would be thrown away is donated to the Bithlo/Christmas Neighborhood Center for Families. Once the materials are collected the workers from the physical plant go to every location on campus to retrieve these materials, sort them, and weigh them before the next day. The money from recycling goes towards new equipment for the campus. I think that it’s great for a large university like the University of Central Florida to be able to recycle so many of these materials is and help the needy at the same time.
As I observe the growing amount of recycling containers of all types as I trek across our campus, I’m glad UCF started to take a stand against the growing amount of recyclable items going into the trash. There are bins for aluminum cans, plastic bottles, newspaper, ink cartridges, plastic bags, and cardboard located in every building and location on campus. I feel a sense of pride whenever I see a container that is almost full. This means that many of our 50,000 students are taking the extra step and recycling, when they could have just as easily thrown a recyclable item in the trash. Every game day event I have attended so far, there have been numerous can and bottle recycling containers and they always seem to be full. Imagine how many cans that would have been lying in our landfills! UCF dining services has also started an event that each home game if you bring twelve cans or plastic bottles to a stand outside of Knightro’s you receive a free t-shirt! If that isn’t a great incentive to start recycling, then I don’t know what is.
A lot of students are choosing to live greenly as well, just not in their choice to recycle but in the food they buy and household items they purchase. In my apartment alone, we choose to purchase Clorox’s Green Works household cleaners to use as dish soap and all purpose cleaner. We also chose to go vegan, which is like being vegetarian but with no animal products at all. Cherah Charter states that she “enjoys eating vegan, when it is possible because you feel healthier and you aren’t getting involved in the killing of animals”. During that two week period of time we lived on salads and soy milk and found it difficult to find other protein rich foods to eat, other than meat. There are other ways to support going green such as wearing novelty tees with sayings such as “stop destroying our planet! It’s where I keep all my stuff” and by wearing organically grown cotton t-shirts and hemp clothing.
The university is also seeking other ways to lower the campus’s green house emissions other than just turning out the lights. Many of the changes taking place so far at UCF are mainly building/construction based. There is a thermal energy storage facility that is on track to be finished this semester and will help keep energy costs low by saving the university 700,000 dollars annually! They have been saving water by installing low flow shower heads to all of the showers and using dual flushing toilets. The shuttle system is also a great sustainable addition. I use the shuttle system daily, and the buses come to my off campus apartment complex every fifteen minutes. It saves me time from having to look for a parking spot and allows another driver to have a parking spot I would have taken up. Additionally it saves me the stress from having to drive in the terrible Orlando traffic when it’s time for me to leave. These few changes on a campus this large will save the school thousands of dollars which could be put towards things that students enjoy such as more free events.
Many citizens believe that the only people who recycle and live sustainably are hippies have faith in “peace, love and happiness” or only college students but now that is not the case. 30% of eighteen to thirty year olds don’t recycle anything, which is contrary to the belief that we students are leaders in living greenly. With the change in prices of electricity and with the recession a lot of middle class families are now trying to cut costs by reusing items and cutting off power when not needed. When asked if he recycled, freshman Kyle Stultz replied “My roommate and I have a habit of collecting all of our bottles in our dorm and at the end of each week we take them downstairs to put in the recycling bin. I think recycling is good for the environment and saves resources, so it’s not a big deal to take a little bit of time to do it.” Another freshman Mariah Charter states that “I try to use the recycling bins as much as possible; I walk by them every day so I might as well use them. I love saving money as well and living sustainably for some things lets me do that. My roommates and I don’t use the dishwasher to save on energy costs”. Some people, however; oppose the idea of recycling and think that it is a waste of time and effort. Freshman Ryan Smith explained to me his point of view, “I don’t want to have to pay money to recycle, that right should be just given to us. If recycling on campus makes the tuition higher then I don’t want to be a part of it.”
I think that if we don’t change some of our bad habits now as “energy wasters” that it will truly start affecting the environment we live in. Already carbon dioxide levels are climbing yearly and many species of animals are going extinct because of change in climate and habitat. The University of Central Florida aims to have all of its buildings LEED certified in the future and is putting more money towards being more sustainable and improving its recycling rate. You can call me a hippie but I’m glad the university I’m attending is actually making an effort towards being “green”.
Works Cited
http://www.recycle.ucf.edu/index.htm
http://today.ucf.edu/blog/2009/05/14/raise-the-recycling-rate/
http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=783
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