As a col­lege stu­dent liv­ing in the dorms, it can be extremely dif­fi­cult to be envi­ron­men­tally con­scious when dis­pos­ing of garbage.

When I was grow­ing up, my fam­ily recy­cled just about every­thing. We had sep­a­rate bins for paper, card­board, alu­minum, and plas­tic. I was taught recy­cling was nec­es­sary to help limit pol­lu­tion and pro­tect the environment.

Living in the dorms my first year made me real­ize that recy­cling at col­lege was going to be dif­fi­cult, if not nearly impos­si­ble. I was appalled by the amount of items that could be reused which were instead thrown away. Finding places to recy­cle is a chal­leng­ing feat at Ferris.

Registered stu­dent orga­ni­za­tions (RSOs) such as Ferris Recyclers, work hard to help imple­ment a greener atti­tude by pro­vid­ing sites where stu­dents can drop off their recy­clables. However, due to its lim­ited resources, Ferris Recyclers is able to offer recy­cling pro­grams in only four res­i­dence halls.

Protecting and pre­serv­ing our envi­ron­ment goes beyond recy­cling; it branches into the amount of elec­tric­ity and water we use in our dorms. I’ve spo­ken with stu­dents who leave their lights on when they go to class because they fig­ure it’s already paid for. This is a com­plete waste of energy. According to light​pol​lu​tion​.org, America wastes approx­i­mately $2000 mil­lion on light pollution.

Many stu­dents liv­ing in the dorms take advan­tage of not hav­ing a monthly water bill by tak­ing unnec­es­sar­ily long show­ers. I admit that dur­ing my fresh­man year, I enjoyed stand­ing in an extra hot shower for an extra five min­utes dur­ing the chilly win­ter months. According to usgs​.gov, the aver­age shower uses two gal­lons of water per minute. My extra five min­utes in the shower wasted an entire 10 gal­lons of water.

Another area in the dorms where water is wasted is in the laun­dry room. It dri­ves me crazy that stu­dents in the dorms can’not get a refund on unused money on their laun­dry cards at the end of the year. This encour­ages stu­dents to do unnec­es­sary loads of laun­dry which wastes approx­i­mately 10 gal­lons per load, accord­ing to usgs​.gov.

Students need to be aware of ways to reduce, reuse, and recy­cle as they live in the dorms. We need to pro­tect our earth for future gen­er­a­tions. n