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The Rice Thresher
6100 Main Street (MS-524)
Houston, TX 77005-1892

There are not many things that make me mad, especially mad enough to act on. I have found one exception, though: recycling or, rather, the lack thereof.

At the beginning of last year, Food and Housing instituted a progressive program to take over student-run recycling at Rice. This is great. However, students' responses have often been lackadaisical. For example, every time I walk into Sid Richardson College's mail room, I see a huge pile of paper in the regular trash bin, with the recycling bin right next to it.

One night as I walked past the Will Rice College Commons, I saw a trash can overflowing with fliers, while a big paper recycling bin sat right across the way. I do not understand. Are we admitting a whole bunch of blind people I don't know about to this school? (Although I really think a blind person would figure it out.)

A blind person, on the other hand, could probably be excused for one other thing which often raises my ire: I walk into a friend's room, with a question about homework and all of the lights are on.

This would be fine, except that nobody is home! I mean, even the lights in the closet are on, as if there are a bunch of little hobbits living in there, or some sort of cash crop is being grown; sometimes the TV is on, or the stereo is blasting. Is this to drive out evil spirits? Usually, I end up turning off all of the unnecessary power wastes.

A simple act like that does not take long. Recycling and conserving resources is easy. By taking three seconds to sort your trash at lunch and throw your can in the recycling bin, you earn the equivalent of one full hour of TV. Another hour can come from simply turning off the TV the hour that you are not watching.

We are used to sloth and waste and blaming the world's environmental problems on big corporations, communist bureaucracies or ignorant third-world farmers. We could run around with a "recycling ribbon" for the rest of our lives and still not walk 10 feet to a recycling bin.

We need to realize that we are overburdening this planet, and it is only through the effort of each and every one of us that we can have any hope of saving it and ourselves.

Kristof Richmond

SRC '97

This item appeared in the Opinion section of the April 11, 1997 issue.