Waste Reduction and Recycling

From WolfWikis

The Waste Reduction and Recycling Facility on the NCSU campus is currently creating a website to discuss what students can do to ensure a more sustainable environment.

Drought

DANGER DANGER DANGER WE ARE IN A DROUGHT SITUATION! We are currently in an EXTREMELY SEVERE DROUGHT!!! It is imperative that everyone conserves their water consumption. Our water reservoir, Falls Lake, is drying up at a miraculous rate! What would you do without water?? Change your habits and conserve now! Americans use 2-4 times as much water as Europeans use per person. We are a wasteful society.

Reduce, REDUCE, REDUCE

WHAT CAN STUDENTS DO TO REDUCE THEIR CONSUMPTION AND WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT!!!

Did it ever occur to you that what we buy has a direct relationship on what we throw away? Everything thing you throw away goes to a landfill. Are you proud of the huge garbage heap you are creating throughout your whole life? Will your life's work be measured by the mountain of your own trash you climb at the end? Why is landfilling a bad thing you ask?

The answer is because future generations will have to deal with all the waste you created. The trash keeps piling up and over time this whole country will have mounds and mounds of trash everywhere. How beautiful would that be? Walking out your door in the morning to an entire landscape of trash. Scoff now, but the population is only getting larger and larger, and that's just more trash of each growing generation.

What can you do to reduce the amount of trash you make? -Buy food packaged in recyclable and recycled materials or with less packaging to begin with with.

 FACT: Packaging makes up about 1/3 of what Americans throw away.
 FACT: The average American uses an estimated 190 pounds of plastic a year.

-Figure out how you're going to dispose of a product-and its packaging- before you buy it. -Look for products you can reuse over and over again- thermos jars, rechargeable batteries, sponges, etc. -Look for containers that can be reused or recycled. -Even Boycott certain items if the packaging is extravagant or ridiculous. What happens to all those cookie wrappers and chip bags, fast food ketchup packets? LANDFILL, LANDFILL, LANDFILL. PLASTIC, PLASTIC, PLASTIC. THE MORE EVERYONE KEEPS BUYING THESE PRODUCTS, THE MORE THE MANUFACTURERS MAKE THEM. We are condemning ourselves to a plastic filled universe. Plastic Soil!! Let's grow tomatoes in the plastic laced soil! YUM

• Become conscious of the impact you have on the environment. Be responsible for what you accumulate and discard of. Do you think its fair for someone else to clean up after you? Do you still need your mommy so you can close your eyes and pretend its not there? Or are you ready to grow up and realize what you are doing???

Energy Conservation

Why is energy conservation important? Number one reason, to save money!!! Your Electric Bill will be very high if you use a lot of energy. If you are paying for your own electricity you will suffer from using a lot of it.

Number two reason why it is important to conserve energy: There is a direct relationship with the environment- i.e. more greenhouse gas emissions, more air pollution, more strip mining , more emissions of sulfur and nitrous oxides which contribute to acid rain, more oil drilling that destroys wildlife and wilderness. To create energy either resources need to get burned, like coal or fuel, or nuclear power is used (YIPES)! All three ways are BAD BAD BAD for the environment. Every time you blow dry your hair for an hour or leave the lights on or your computer on all day you are wasting electricity.

THE FACTS: 1 kilowatt hour of electricity produces 1.5 lbs. of CO2 Carbon Dioxide! For temperatures above 68 degrees Fahrenheit 3% more fuel oil is used for each degree. Heating water is #2 use of energy in home. A refrigerator can use as much as 25% of the electricity in your apartment.

WAKE UP! Do you really enjoy destroying the environment? Do you value strings of wire with electrons buzzing around it more than you do the forests or animal life? Where do you place importance: a world full of power lines and power plants or mountains, streams, birds, and trees? Living plants provide you with oxygen; power plants provide you with smog and polluted air. hmmmmm.....

So what can YOU DO???

• Don't use hot water when you can use cold (laundry, etc.)
• Use a clothesline or only the necessary amount of time for your clothes to dry in the dryer.
• Use curtains and seal your windows to insulate cold air or the heat.
• Insulate your water heater with a water heater blanket.
• Use a fan instead of air conditioning (ahh! circulating fresh air, instead of that boxed air filled with particulate matter.)
• Turn lights/computer/appliances off when not using them. You know that little orange light that stays on after you press power off (standby)- that means the appliance is still using energy. UNPLUG IT!
• If your refrigerator is 10 degrees colder you can be using 25% more energy than necessary.

Turn your frig between 38-42 degrees and your freezer at 0-5 degrees. Clean your condenser coils in your frig at least once a year.

Develop energy conservation at NCSU- power the heating plant to run entirely on waste-crank oil -OR- heat up buildings with waste heat recovered from computer operations.

Food For Thought

You Are What You Eat
Interesting Fact from the Diet for a New America: If Americans reduced their meat intake by just 10%, the savings in grains and soybeans could adequately feed *60 million people who starve to death worldwide each year.

• Growing Grains and vegetables uses less than 5% as much raw materials as meat production does.
• Over 100 active perticide ingredients are suspected to cause birth defects, cancer, and gene mutation.
• The food on the average American's plate has traveled more than 1,300 miles to get there.

Green Guide

Everything you can do to actively save the environment!!!

• Recycle Paper (use both sides!)
• Recycle Plastic and Glass Bottles and Aluminum and Steel Cans
• Make Recycling easily accessible for others to use, print signs in other languages
• Reuse your MUG/ THERMOS/ NALGENE where ever you go
• Precycle- buy products that have less packaging
• Buy items that are made from recycled materials

• Ride a Bike!
• Carpool
• Use Public Transportation CAT Bus (Capital Area Transit), WOLFLINE, TTA bus

• Reduce your food waste
• Compost!
• Eat locally grown food

• Reduce your energy Consumption
• Monitor your Energy consumption-- Electricity or Gas Power
• Use more energy efficient light bulbs- LED, fluorescent (as opposed to incandescent)

• Plant trees
• Get the university to use less chemicals and hazardous waste in the laboratories- i.e. microscale chemistry for experiments.
• Get the university to stop or limit their use of pesticides
• Encourage Bookstores to Go 'Green-er' i.e. Bring your own bag, get them to order books that used recycled materials in production
• Reduce Water Consumption
• Build a Greenhouse

• Work with your Community to improve the City
• Register to Vote
• Get an Environmental Internship
• Expand the Environmental Curriculum on campus- Design new courses to take and work with administration for development and approval

• "Green" Your Event-- reduce waste and the negative impact on the environment