Lines From Ms Lauren (May)
One of my favourite quotes is by an American cultural anthropologist named Margaret Mead. She said “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.” I think our recent recycling initiative at TCSH is a great example of this principle in action.
There is so much garbage in the world that a couple of countries have proposed taking a corner of one of their national parks and turning it into a garbage dump, a landfill. How sad that we seem to focusing harder on where to put our garbage than on reducing it down to a manageable amount. At TCSH, we have reduced the number of garbage bags we send to the landfill from an average of 45 bags per week to 36 bags for each of the last two weeks since we have been paying attention to our recycling. If we keep that up we will put out about 450 fewer bags of garbage than we did last year! We also recycled several months’ worth of paper being kept by the exam unit that would normally have been sent to the landfill. If a small community like TCSH can reduce our garbage by 500 bags annually just with a TINY change in our habits, can you just imagine how drastically the world’s waste management could change with some dedication to this cause?
There are different categories of environmental issues. The three “biggies” are Waste Management (reduction of garbage), Energy Conservation and Environmental Stewardship. I have given a suggestion for each of the first two for something I think TCSH students and staff members are ready to try.
1. Waste Management:
Reuse your water bottle. Avoid buying bottled water. In fact, reuse everything at least once, especially plastics.
2. Energy Conservation
Try car pooling or walking or biking or something that reduces the number of car rides you take in a week. (I would love to start an on-line car pooling ‘matchup’ for TCSH. If anyone has an idea on how to get this started, come and see me.)
Do you know what your carbon footprint is? It is the number of tons of carbon emissions that your particular lifestyle creates in the world. There is a website that helps you determine your carbon footprint, very roughly and quickly, and also tells you how many trees it takes to absorb the amount of carbon you are producing. I don’t even own a car and I just calculated my annual carbon emissions as 28.59 tons, which would take 24 trees to offset. The website is here. Calculate your carbon footprint …
And if you do, enter your name , the number of tons of carbon, and the number of trees required to offset it into this spreadsheet I created at Google Drive to allow us to collect TCSH data.
What does the future hold? Here is one artist’s version of what Australia will look like in 2050 (Adrian.salamandre/Flickr). None of us can really answer this question but it is ostrich-like to believe that the Millenials/Linkster generation can continue to ignore environmental issues and live the good life for decades to come. I invite you now to try my two suggestions above, AND to show that you are part of our “small group of thoughtful, committed citizens” by supporting the transition of TCSH from a college that recycled almost nothing to one that recycles more than it discards. Your ideas for how to help make this more and more successful over the next few days, weeks and months would be greatly appreciated!
By Lauren Wilson
There is so much garbage in the world that a couple of countries have proposed taking a corner of one of their national parks and turning it into a garbage dump, a landfill. How sad that we seem to focusing harder on where to put our garbage than on reducing it down to a manageable amount. At TCSH, we have reduced the number of garbage bags we send to the landfill from an average of 45 bags per week to 36 bags for each of the last two weeks since we have been paying attention to our recycling. If we keep that up we will put out about 450 fewer bags of garbage than we did last year! We also recycled several months’ worth of paper being kept by the exam unit that would normally have been sent to the landfill. If a small community like TCSH can reduce our garbage by 500 bags annually just with a TINY change in our habits, can you just imagine how drastically the world’s waste management could change with some dedication to this cause?
There are different categories of environmental issues. The three “biggies” are Waste Management (reduction of garbage), Energy Conservation and Environmental Stewardship. I have given a suggestion for each of the first two for something I think TCSH students and staff members are ready to try.
1. Waste Management:
Reuse your water bottle. Avoid buying bottled water. In fact, reuse everything at least once, especially plastics.
2. Energy Conservation
Try car pooling or walking or biking or something that reduces the number of car rides you take in a week. (I would love to start an on-line car pooling ‘matchup’ for TCSH. If anyone has an idea on how to get this started, come and see me.)
Do you know what your carbon footprint is? It is the number of tons of carbon emissions that your particular lifestyle creates in the world. There is a website that helps you determine your carbon footprint, very roughly and quickly, and also tells you how many trees it takes to absorb the amount of carbon you are producing. I don’t even own a car and I just calculated my annual carbon emissions as 28.59 tons, which would take 24 trees to offset. The website is here. Calculate your carbon footprint …
And if you do, enter your name , the number of tons of carbon, and the number of trees required to offset it into this spreadsheet I created at Google Drive to allow us to collect TCSH data.
What does the future hold? Here is one artist’s version of what Australia will look like in 2050 (Adrian.salamandre/Flickr). None of us can really answer this question but it is ostrich-like to believe that the Millenials/Linkster generation can continue to ignore environmental issues and live the good life for decades to come. I invite you now to try my two suggestions above, AND to show that you are part of our “small group of thoughtful, committed citizens” by supporting the transition of TCSH from a college that recycled almost nothing to one that recycles more than it discards. Your ideas for how to help make this more and more successful over the next few days, weeks and months would be greatly appreciated!By Lauren Wilson
