The typical college student lives a very busy life — going to classes, doing homework, working, studying for tests and if you have time left, participating in extracurricular activities and the occasional party on the weekend. This fast-paced lifestyle leads us to base all our decisions on convenience.
At N.C. State, on-campus housing provides recycling bins inside each room and separate, larger cans conveniently located outside the buildings for students to sort their recyclables. However, many students do not live on campus beyond their sophomore year. This means more than 15,000 students live off campus.
The City of Raleigh provides recycling services to all addresses free of charge including apartment complexes. So why are we still tossing cans?
Rob Clark, a senior in mechanical engineering, offers some insight.
“Do we typically grab a drink in a reusable container as we run out the door? No. We reach for a can or a plastic bottle instead. When we are out and about, do we look for a recycling location before we get rid of our empty cans or bottles? No. We toss it in the first trash can we see. When we are at a party, do we really think about what can be recycled? No. We throw everything in the dumpster right outside the building.”
Although students may be aware of the environmental and economic importance, it remains an inconvenient truth that recycling is not always convenient. It’s true that many of the off campus apartment complexes offer recycling facilities, but they’re typically not located near the dumpsters, causing residents to go out of their way to recycle — something that isn’t convenient at all.
Other student housing locations, such as Campus Crossings and Wolf Creek apartments, offer a wealth of benefits including great pools, tanning beds and gyms but don’t provide recycling facilities for their thousands of collegiate residents. Yet these same apartment complexes pay the City of Raleigh for each on-site dumpster they have — a cost that is factored in when determining rent.
According to the U.S. Department of Energy, each person produces 4.5 pounds of trash every day. The ever increasing gas prices to transport waste to landfills, costly land taxes for these dumps and the environmental impact of disposing this trash are all concerns the City of Raleigh faces daily. These concerns are not cheap, and rising apartment rent costs reflect this.
It’s not that students don’t want to recycle — Matt Blanchard, a junior in industrial engineering and a Wolf Creek resident, says he would recycle if on-site facilities existed.
Implementing recycling programs at these locations is not a difficult task — all it takes is for enough residents to bug the administration to call the City of Raleigh Recycling at 831-6890. Perhaps if the University offered these complexes incentives, it would be more “convenient” for them to recycle, or maybe something similar to the water conservation contest held between NCSU and UNC during the drought, where apartment complexes compete to see who can recycle.
E-mail Jessie your opinions to letters@technicianonline.com.
