One Tuesday morning (Feb. 26, to be exact), I woke up at 8:30 a.m.; not too unusual. I proceeded to open up some blinds, letting in nonexistent sunlight on a dreary winter morning. When I looked out the glass, about 50 feet away near the dumpsters stood a dumpster truck, also not unusual. At first, I thought that the trucks that say “All-American waste” are solely for garbage, and this one was thus committing a terrible act by picking up recyclables. I then learned that the All American Waste trucks pick up both the trash and recyclables, and do so separately. It wasn’t picking up both trash and recycling, just the latter. So combining the two this wasn’t this morning’s problem.
Ever so slowly, the truck lifted the mini dumpster up and off the ground, and then put the container back on the ground. A minute later, the truck once again advanced towards the recyclables, lifting the dumpster up, tilting it backwards, and dumping everything into its bed. A pile of supposed recyclables all in white plastic garbage bags flooded out. The truck claimed all the single stream waste as its own, crammed together in bags, probably ready for the landfills.
The University of New Haven does not recycle any type of plastic bag. If recyclables are placed in a plastic bag, and then in the dumpster for recycling, the entire batch of recyclables is now unusable, not to mention that the university gets a fine. All that recycling was futile, all because it was in a bag. Some places do recycle plastic bags, but our university does not. As unfortunate as this is, we students are made clear of that.
This ongoing problem is not the school’s fault. The “no plastic bags” rule has been mentioned in The Charger Bulletin, on our school’s radio station, WNHU, and it is available on the Newhaven.edu website. There is also a green sticker slapped on the front of all recycling dumpsters saying NO PLASTIC BAGS. Is it really so hard to not use a plastic bag if it is for such an important cause? The more technology and inventions this society has, the more they seem to be disabling us. We are unable to do anything without some tool to make the task easier.
Recyclables can (and should) be taken out loosely. All this means is that you pick up your garbage pail/bucket/container, walk it to the dumpster, dump the recyclables out, then place it back in your home, no plastic bags needed. We are students now, in the peak of our physical and mental states (well, most of us at least), so such things should be easy. Is convenience really worth damage to our natural environment?
Next time you take out the recycling, hopefully you do, make sure a plastic bag doesn’t go in too. Spread the word, and correct someone if they don’t know, because awareness of these causes is so simple and so vital. Even though it is not springtime, this doesn’t mean our campus can’t be a “green” place to live.
