We have all heard about recycling, probably beginning with mini celebrations for Earth Day in grade school. Right now, UW-P is participating in the international RecycleMania initiative, a 10-week program designed to increase recycling awareness in colleges and universities.

Probably most of us have meant to recycle more often, but it’s easier to not do so. It’s very tempting to just throw everything in the trash bin behind our apartment buildings instead of sorting out the beer cans from the leftover spaghetti. At the Pioneer Student Center, it’s faster to just dump everything on our trays into the garbage, rather than sorting it out. We might feel a twinge of momentary guilt as we watch our plastic Aquafina bottle tumble down onto a pile of cheeseburger wrappers and wilted salad remains. Five seconds later, though, it passes right out of our minds.

Some people might claim that recycling can be bad for the environment, and they would be partially right. According to an article on discovermagazine.com, not all types of plastic can be recycled together. Plastics like clear water bottles may get the green light for your area, but other containers like empty yogurt cartons may not. Therefore, it’s very important to realize how plastics must be sorted for the facilities where you live.
However, not recycling would cause even greater damage. “Recycling is generally far better than sending waste to landfills and relying on new raw materials to drive the consumer economy,” the article stated. “It takes two-thirds less energy to make products from recycled plastic than from virgin plastic.” So learning how to properly recycle is a very worthy endeavor. Saving energy and sparing masses of land from becoming a graveyard of human negligence is certainly worthwhile.

It is no secret that this planet is facing somewhat of a crisis, and a lot of people really do not seem to care.
hose concerned about Earth’s future are contemptuously labeled hippies and crazy liberals instead of what they are: Practical and far-seeing. According to green-energysaving.com, we are facing an end of the oil supply within our lifetime. Some predict it may happen in as little as 25 years, others say 40. Whatever the actual year count, “it is imminent.” The article states that “in 2007 production from the world’s mature oil fields was declining at a rate of 6.7 percent a year,” which is “likely to get worse over time.” If we keep going through oil at the rate we have been, the predicted 1.2 trillion barrels left will be gone in 44 years.

This is a big, big problem. We heavily depend on oil, and not just to run gas in our cars. If we run out of oil without finding an efficient and affordable replacement, we will face some major consequences, including financial and economic. That fact should catch everybody’s attention.

Efforts and organizations such as UW-P’s renewable energy minor are not reserved for tie-dyed tree huggers. They are for people intelligent enough to realize that unless we get it together quick, we are facing a huge mess on our hands in the not-so-distant future. It does not matter whether you are democrat or republican, a liberal or conservative, a moderate, socialist, communist or libertarian. This issue is one that you should care about because it directly affects you. Start caring and learning about it now.