Do you recycle? Well according to recent figures 55% of student household waste is currently being recycled. Which personally, I think is pretty good going considering how busy our student lives are.
Fitting recycling around sports, partying and, of course, work may seem like a chore, but with the ever increasing simplicity of recycling and growing awareness of its importance, it seems there isn’t really a valid excuse not to. Basically, two bins, one recyclable and one for landfill is all you need. In fact, to make it easier the majority of City Council's will issue coloured boxes for glass, tins, paper etc, so guys, unless there is a sudden pandemic of colour blindness, there’s no excuse not to recycle.
So now you know it’s easy to recycle, it might be helpful to tell you why it’s worth doing. Well I could lecture you about global warming, ethics, fossil fuels and so on, but there’s also the fact that it’s costing us. Each year, every household pays £49 in landfill tax, which is set to rise. Were about to get a scalding off the EU and a massive fine of around £180 million is set coming our way in the next five years too. Money which could be used more efficiently, say, reducing student tuition fees.
On average we produce enough rubbish a year in the UK to fill Wembley stadium seventy times over. That’s about six tonnes per person and the same weight as six VW beetles. I don’t remember putting six of those into my bin last year, but that fact is that each of us did.
It's great that students are recycling more than half of their household waste, but more needs to be done and quickly. Predictions state the world’s population will be at 9.4 billion by 2050, that’s an increase of 2.6 billion in just forty years. We as a species and as a planet could not, at this moment in time, physically deal with that rise. Not just due to the sheer amount of waste increase it would result in but also the strain it would have on our natural resources and food production.
To control problems we are going to have in the future, we need to act now. So next time you go to put that wine bottle, beer can, and old lecture notes in the bin, think! One odd can, one piece of paper may seem minor but if every student recycles those odd bits it really can make a difference and to be honest it’s quite an easy way to do your bit.