Essay 3 Proposal- Starting a UAF Recycling Club: Stop What Your Doing and Recycle!

Mattie Bly

As fears of global warming and environmental hardships increase, so does the movement of environmentalism. Environmentalism is a social movement with intentions of improving and restoring earth’s natural environment. An effective way to take part in this movement is by recycling. Recycling is easy, affordable, and readily available almost all over the country. Although UAF leads a strong commitment in promoting environmentalism, UAF should improve upon this commitment by starting a recycling club because it would enable widespread education about the importance of recycling, allow for easier access to recycling on campus, and help decrease the amount of waste UAF disposes of.

Little has been done in the way of recycling programs at UAF. A part of this problem is the education provided to students. Implementing a recycling club would provide an easy and fun way to educate students and faculty. Education would include the benefits of recycling and what can and cannot be recycled. Benefits of recycling include saving money, energy, and helping the wildlife and environment. Knowing what can and can’t be recycled is also an important aspect of recycling. Some recyclable materials include clear glass containers, paper, plastic, and aluminum cans. With aluminum cans, recycling them can help save natural resources, energy, time and money for aluminum is sustainable and can be recycled over and over again. Education through a recycling club would be easy, through educational events, movies, and even can collecting fundraisers. Can collecting fundraisers are not only an easy way to get students to start recycling, but also raise money that could go towards accessibility to recycling or other environmental projects.

With the support and drive of a recycling club, recycling could become more easily available and accessible to students and faculty. This would include adding more recycling bins to classrooms and bathrooms. Plastic bins would also be added for items such as soda bottles. Having plastic bins is critical in recycling for plastic is becoming more and more known for its harmful effects on the environment as well as its difficult time in actually making it to landfills. Plastic is popular for ending up in bodies of water or on the ground, seemingly impossible to decompose. Access to recycling within dorms is also important for students usually only have dumpsters to dispose of all of their waste. Having recycling bins on each floor, bathroom, or even in the lobby would allow for students to dispose of recyclables instead of throwing them in the dumpsters.

Having the education and resources will enable UAF to decrease its waste. Large amounts of waste are detrimental and costly to the environment. Our landfills are quickly filling up and becoming a less viable option to our waste problems. UAF does not have its own landfill and so must utilize the one within the North Star Borough. Each time UAF disposes of waste, there are costs and fees associated. It only makes sense to reduce waste therefor reducing the money spent. Having a recycling club and program will provide easy ways for anyone on campus to recycle as well as help provide safe disposal off campus of these recyclables so they don’t end up in the local landfill. Critics say though that it costs just as much to recycle as it does to dispose of garbage at a landfill, so why not throw it all away at once. Although it does cost to recycle, it is important to look at the long term effects of recycling versus throwing it in a landfill. Benefits outweigh the costs in that it ends up saving UAF in the long run in the terms of money, energy, and the environment that surrounds it.

With starting any club, there is a lot of work and challenges to get through. In starting a recycling club, these challenges include overcoming arguments and criticism. Arguments include the participation of students and faculty, as well as how will the disposal of recyclables be handled. It is tough to determine if students and faculty will participate in the recycling program. These things do take time, especially when attempting to change the way people do things on a daily basis. With the support of the recycling club, UAF, and the widespread education and accessibility, participation should be successful. In terms of how the recyclables will be disposed of, members of the recycling club as well as facility services who do some recycling already would all aid in collecting recyclables on campus and transporting them off campus.

Any small step taken helps towards the reduction of UAF’s waste. Through recycling, anyone, if not everyone on the UAF campus can participate and do their part. With the implementation of a recycling club, fun and easy widespread education about recycling would be available for students and faculty. Access to recycling would also be made readily available all throughout campus. Through strong education combined with easy access, waste reduction on campus would become a lot simpler. This in turn would save UAF money and energy as well as benefit the wildlife and environment that make up the surrounding beauty of our campus.