Recently the topic of ‘going green’ has me quite fired up in a positive, must-take-action sort of way. Ever since I was a kid, I was surrounded by the motto “Recycle, Reduce, Reuse.” It even had a super cheesy jingle that went along with it on TV commercials. This motto certainly still holds true today, but on a deeper level. Going green isn’t about being a tree-hugger anymore; it’s about becoming aware of the immense impacts that we as humans impose on the environment, which all contribute to global warming, carbon emissions, and so much more. Really, we take a lot of things for granted.
There were several specific triggers that raised my sense of urgency this year. All seemed very ordinary at the time, but led me to get a little more enthusiastic about putting things in action.
- Moving: When I came to Chicago in June, transitioning to an urban apartment was an big, yet interesting change. I was highly irritated to learn that we had convenient trash chutes on every floor, yet no recycling bins for the building. I looked up the city of Chicago recycling website, and supposedly all residential buildings of four units or more are required to have a recycling program. Obviously that is not being enforced. So now I take the recyclables to a public collection center just a few blocks away until our building provides that service (not for another six months). Having always lived in a suburb, recycling programs were aplenty. Most local waste management programs made it easy to sort out recyclables with separate colored bins, and then later to single large bins that allowed mixed items. Now we don’t even need to sort! Now that is hand holding. All there is left to do is physically separate trash from recyclables, which doesn’t require much effort or commitment.
- The Green Book: In late June, a friend passed along this book to me since I was interested in the topic and suggested that I pass it along to anyone and everyone. I put our names inside the front flap of the book as a starting list of people who will have read the book. It is really eye-opening for all of us to read. With commentary from celebrity favorites, it is a quick read that gives easy suggestions on how to make a difference. It also provides quantitative facts to highlight the magnitude of all that we do. Numbers aren’t just numbers anymore.
- The workplace: I had a huge dose of training and orientation for nearly three weeks straight. Food and beverages were overly abundant at most hours of the day to get us through those sessions. With all that stuff comes bottles and cans that need to be recycled, but to my astonishment, none of the large training rooms had recycling bins. How can a building that has a LEED Gold certified plaque in the lobby not have recycle bins in these rooms? I really have this uncomfortable feeling every time a bottle or can gets thrown in the trash. Oh yeah, and we have Styrofoam cups in all kitchen areas. Ugh. This year will be a great opportunity to be involved in the office activities surrounding this.
- Sustainable business: This topic is getting a lot of attention in the news, as it should be. It basically refers to the way businesses handle their operations in an eco-friendly manner in order to have long term growth. It’s a win-win for any business in the long run, as well as becoming a standard in today’s economy.
The more I learn about this topic, the more I want to do things. I can even see it as a potential career path to take, but I just don’t know exactly what or how.
I’m definitely not obsessive-compulsive about being so green to the point where I’m using candles in lieu of electricity, boycotting travel on planes, or taking the stairs up to the 20th floor … and we shouldn’t have to go to such extremes. However, I do think there are simple things that everyone can do to make our environment better.
Here’s a simple start: Imagine the number of Starbucks coffee beverages being consumed each day, and most probably come with a paper sleeve. How about we all place our hot coffee cup sleeves in the paper recycling bin instead of tossing it in the trash? Alternatively, you can reuse it for another day. After all, most are made from some percentage of post-consumer recycled materials to begin with, and it doesn’t take that much much to recycle it. It all counts.