The Lumberjack



Students Serving The Cal Poly Humboldt Campus and Community Since 1929

Tag: reduce

  • Reduce, Reuse, Repurpose Recyclables

    Reduce, Reuse, Repurpose Recyclables

    Earn money. Many recycling plants in California offer trade-in programs where you can redeem money from the cash refund value (CRV) of plastic, glass and aluminum cans. The CRV amount for aluminum cans under 24 ounces and for glass and plastic bottles is $0.05. Containers larger than 24 ounces are redeemable for $0.10. Here in Humboldt you can take your bottles and cans to Humboldt Sanitation & Recycling in McKinleyville or the Eureka Recycling Center.

    Make something new. There are so much things that can be reused and transformed into something new. Milk cartons can become bird feeders and trash can become artwork. Locally, Scrap Humboldt offers hundreds upon thousands of recycled, slightly used and new items for sale to let your creativity soar. They host creation tutorials to show people how to turn something discarded into something useful again. You can also donate your clean recyclables to their Arcata location to add to their collection of items for repurposing.

    Clean them. Clean your recyclables before you toss them. Be mindful of the journey your recycling has yet to take in this consumerist chain. Besides knowing what is appropriate to recycle, it’s also important to properly prepare items before you recycle them. Cans should be rinsed clean, plastic caps should be discarded and wrappers should be torn off of containers.

    Compost. Compost what you can. Paper materials like cardboard and newsprint are great materials for creating new flower and produce beds. These items don’t have to end up in the trash or even the recycling bin. Paper is great for reducing decomposition stench from compost bins and the carbon in paper can help facilitate the breakdown of waste. Just be sure the paper you use in your compost doesn’t have glossy inks like magazine paper.

    Throw away the rest. You might be recycling things that aren’t recyclable. Plastics numbered with 3, 4 or 7 are sometimes not accepted by curbside recycling programs. Check your local recycling plant’s policies on what materials they accept and what they reject. Things like pizza boxes, aerosol cans, batteries and styrofoam are not recyclable. Throw items like these away or find a proper disposal. Here on campus there are several recycling hubs which offer bins for proper disposal of batteries, computer products and cellphones.

  • Recycling isn’t working

    Recycling isn’t working

    Recycling is not as sustainable as you might think. It has become a wasteful movement that was beneficial during the early stages of the environmental movement. Now the cost outweighs the satisfaction we get out of recycling.

    “Recycling has been relentlessly promoted as a goal in and of itself: an unalloyed public good and private virtue that is indoctrinated in students from kindergarten through college,” wrote John Tierney, journalist and self-described “contrarian” for the New York Times. “As a result, otherwise well-informed and educated people have no idea of the relative costs and benefits.”

    To put it in another way, most recycling advocates are unaware of the cost of transportation, labor and production of renewable materials that ultimately defeats the purpose of saving the planet.

    Recyclers are validated by the collective consciousness of fellow believers. They don’t realize the wastefulness that occurs after rolling the recycling bin to the curb. Why did things get worse? The short answer is the success of an ongoing marketing campaign that resonates with a growing population of millennials and aging liberals.

    Since the advent of the “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” idea, recycling received the most attention. Why? Because there’s barely any money in reducing or reusing. If you think about it, recycling starts its capitalistic cycle from our wallets to the bins or recycling centers, then to the manufacturing plants, the businesses and back to burning a hole in our pockets.

    So, there you have it, reduce consumption and reuse your renewable materials. Buy used products and learn how to repair them if they break. Borrow, rent or share if you can. The point is to reduce the disadvantages of recycling that is practiced by too many people and apply smarter solutions to climate change. If enough of us consume less and reuse more, the act of recycling can reclaim its integrity. It’s all about balance.