Spring Break
Letters To The Editor
Issue date: 2/8/08 Section: Commentary
RecycleMania Has A Positive Impact
Dan Cunningham's column, "RecycleMania's Method Is Flawed, Misguided" (Feb. 7) is, well, misguided. Cunningham is wrong to suggest that recycling is not an environmentally beneficial practice and that RecycleMania is counterproductive. His commentary does have one valid point: that waste reduction is better than recycling. Reduce and reuse come before recycle in the famous slogan for a reason. Reducing consumption and reducing our waste is absolutely better than recycling, but recycling is far better than land filling or incinerating and making products from virgin materials.
Recycling is absolutely an environmentally beneficial practice as it reduces solid waste and reduces green house gas emissions. Compared to producing products from virgin materials, recycling saves enormous amounts of energy and prevents pollution and land degradation associated with mining and drilling. For example, it takes about 95 percent less energy to recycle an aluminum can than it does to make one from virgin material. For other materials, the energy savings are about 70 percent for plastics, 60 percent for steel, 40 percent for paper and 30 percent for glass. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, in 2006, 82 million tons of material was recycled preventing about 50 million metric tons of carbon emissions, roughly the amount emitted annually by 39 million cars, saving the energy equivalent to 10 billion gallons of gasoline.
RecycleMania is not about promoting consumption, but about raising awareness and changing student, staff and faculty habits. Though UConn is not participating in RecycleMania's waste reduction division this year (it can't since UConn does not currently track all total solid waste tonnage) waste reduction is still being encouraged, as it has for years through use of reusable EcoHusky mugs and double-sided copies. Other efforts to reduce waste are popping up on campus. The UConn Co-op just started selling reusable bags and is setting up a donation program for customers that don't take plastic bags. There are even some people on campus that would like to see UConn kick the bottled water habit.
Dan Cunningham's column, "RecycleMania's Method Is Flawed, Misguided" (Feb. 7) is, well, misguided. Cunningham is wrong to suggest that recycling is not an environmentally beneficial practice and that RecycleMania is counterproductive. His commentary does have one valid point: that waste reduction is better than recycling. Reduce and reuse come before recycle in the famous slogan for a reason. Reducing consumption and reducing our waste is absolutely better than recycling, but recycling is far better than land filling or incinerating and making products from virgin materials.
Recycling is absolutely an environmentally beneficial practice as it reduces solid waste and reduces green house gas emissions. Compared to producing products from virgin materials, recycling saves enormous amounts of energy and prevents pollution and land degradation associated with mining and drilling. For example, it takes about 95 percent less energy to recycle an aluminum can than it does to make one from virgin material. For other materials, the energy savings are about 70 percent for plastics, 60 percent for steel, 40 percent for paper and 30 percent for glass. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, in 2006, 82 million tons of material was recycled preventing about 50 million metric tons of carbon emissions, roughly the amount emitted annually by 39 million cars, saving the energy equivalent to 10 billion gallons of gasoline.
RecycleMania is not about promoting consumption, but about raising awareness and changing student, staff and faculty habits. Though UConn is not participating in RecycleMania's waste reduction division this year (it can't since UConn does not currently track all total solid waste tonnage) waste reduction is still being encouraged, as it has for years through use of reusable EcoHusky mugs and double-sided copies. Other efforts to reduce waste are popping up on campus. The UConn Co-op just started selling reusable bags and is setting up a donation program for customers that don't take plastic bags. There are even some people on campus that would like to see UConn kick the bottled water habit.
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