Environmental Supplement

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| 226 days ‘12 bags - Duffy | X40 bags 18 bags - Main |

= 9040 10 bags - Memorial | iBy: Jason Roberts. 4

One person can make a difference Reducing waste made easy for everyone

By C.A. Schneider HAVE YOU EVER WONDERED HOW YOU could help in the fight to save our home planet? Many people, including students, ask that very question only to decide that one per son can’t make that much of a difference. They are wrong about that. One person living by the three Rs --reduce, reuse, recycle-- can relieve the landfills of much of the waste that usually ends up there. Accordingto a 1992 study of landfills and garbage in Milwaukee, the average amount of household waste taken to landfills is |.9 pounds per person per day. Seems like alotdoesn'tit. That's because it isa lot, in one year a person contributes up to 694 pounds of waste. With all the millions of people who share this earth, that makes a heck of a lot of garbage. All this waste has to go some- where and the storage facilities are ; quickly filling up. The search for new sites runs into problems because peo- ple fight to keep new landfills away from their neighbourhoods. This “not in my backyard” mindset is leading the Earth towards a garbage crisis that may well end life as we know it. This crisis is

‘inevitable unless we all chip in and do our part to protect our environment

from our own wastefulness.

The three Rs are the easiest way to accomplish our goal of cutting our waste. Reducing, reusing and recycling (who hasn't heard of it?) are all rather painless once you get used to the life- style. According to the Milwaukee study the majority of the waste taken to the landfills can be taken care of through one or more of the three Rs.

As scary as it sound, the first R is probably the easiest one to accomplish. Re- ducing means lowering your waste output by doing simple things like using a ceramic, or plastic, plate and cup when you get food from the cafeteria, even when it’s take-out, or choosing not to buy individually packaged cheese slices. Neither of these sound like very big things; however when you think about how much waste you save over the course ofa year, you realize how much these simple things add up to. Reducing also means using the other two Rs to reduce your waste output.

Reusing covers many different areas of waste. It may mean something as complex as composting food waste or something as sim- ple as reusing your plastic grocery bags everytime you shop. Composting is a wonder- ful way of reducing your household waste because it goes beyond reduction. When food

wastes are composted, inside or out, they are broken down into a natural fertilizer that can be used for commercial or personal use. There are three different types of composting: backyard, indoor, or commercial composting. Backyard composting means form- ing a compost pile, usually in the corner of a

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food waste is compostable; however it is not recommended that backyard or indoor com. posers put meat, bones, fish or dairy products in their compost as all these things will attract small animals. Coffee grounds and filters, tea bags egg shells and vegetable scraps make wonderful compost regardless of the setting. Non-waxed cardboard, sawdust, ani- mal or human hair as well as house and garden plant waste are also compostable. All of these items add to the content of the compost to make it as rich as it can be.

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garden or yard, where the food waste can decay without disturbing the residents. Indoor composting usually involves keeping a closed bucket in a warm dark area of a house. This type of composting is not for the squeamish since the bucket is stocked with worms to break the wastes down into an extremely fertile top soil. Many of the larger universities have composers such as this in their resi- dences to cut down on the output of waste from the buildings. Commercial composting means that food wastes are separated from other waste and picked up by a company, or community to be used in making commercially

sold top soil and fertilizer. All three types of

composting are effective in cutting the amount

of waste that hits the landfills by cutting the

food waste almost completely out of the

equation.

Composting has some very specific

rules as to what is acceptable and what is not.

As far as commercial composting goes, any

Composting is the extreme of the reusing set. There are many other ways to cut waste by reusing. Many communities have weeks when they ask people to put out their large pieces of garbage such as old furri- ture, old toys etc and people are invited to take anything that they would find useful before the garbag picks it up. You can use cloth shop- ping bags and avoid plastic ones, o reuse the same plastic ones until the are worn out. Then you proceed t the next step in cutting waste, recy cling.

Recycling is a form of reusing where the wastes are not immedi, ately reused, but remade first. Su items as plastic bags, cans, paper corrugated cardboard and bottles ar all recyclable. Plastic bags are co lected in recycling boxes at mat grocery stores. So the next time y go to the store take along that clos full of plastic and spend the rest your life wondering if this bag was made of one you turned in years ago. Metal ranging from pop cans to soup cans are ak recyclable. Most recycling depots ask that y rinse the cans out and crush them with the li inside the can. Aerosol cans, paint cans, froz juice containers, and metal pots are not ré clable. All non-glossy paper and non-wa% corrugated cardboard is also recyclable. Jui beer and pop bottles are also recyclable, bottle depots will take these and possibly &” give you some money for them. Glass is 4 hu part of what is filling up the waste stor’ areas so please make an effort to recycle |

Taxing care of our environment s part of every man, woman and child's res sibility. We depend on the earth, if she depend on us neither of us have a future. Ev little bit of waste you cut gives the earth, home, a better chance of survival our fu" generations are depending on it.

Graphic by Mike Rappaport