Señorita Ruth

Señorita Ruth on: being Green

I’m get­ting tired of toss­ing stuff in the trash. Espe­cially as I raise a child, the guilt I feel when I toss out another plas­tic con­tainer or glass bot­tle is get­ting pretty unbear­able. So, what to do? There are sev­eral options to change your Car­bon Foot­print, even if solar pan­els are still out­side your price bracket. In addi­tion, there’s a slew of web­sites and books out there with valu­able insight into the lit­tle things (and big!) that we can do to change our impact from neg­a­tive to pos­i­tive. Fol­low­ing are some of the most acces­si­ble ways to alle­vi­ate waste and guilt.

Recy­cling: The City of Albu­querque will pick up your recy­clables road-side pro­vided you have them sep­a­rated and bagged appro­pri­ately. Alter­na­tively, they also offer 22 drop-off points through­out the metro area. As the years have gone by, the city has expanded their recy­cling reper­toire, now accept­ing all plas­tic bot­tles regard­less of num­ber, as well as plas­tics #s 1 and 2. This is in addi­tion to cor­ru­gated card­board, not chip­board (i.e. cereal boxes), alu­minum, and any and all house­hold paper, includ­ing the godaw­ful obnox­ious shiny paper of junk mail­ings. They won’t pick up glass for safety rea­sons, but you can drop that off at the recy­cling point near­est you. Over­all, recy­cling around here can be pretty effort­less, pro­vided you’re will­ing to build into your rou­tine the extra sev­eral min­utes a week it would take to make sure waste is sep­a­rated from reusable mate­r­ial. Like any good habit, this can be hard to incor­po­rate into our already packed lives, but as a mat­ter of pri­or­ity, it’s cer­tainly worth the effort to get the recy­clable mate­ri­als to the curb by 7 a.m. on trash day. A way to do this eas­ily is to sort trash from the get-go. You can re-purpose sev­eral trash­cans to do the dirty work, or you can find a solu­tion like this one to keep all your cans and bot­tles out of sight. Or hell, you can build it if you’re car­pen­try inclined. A cheap and handy can crusher can be wall-mounted and kept out of sight in the laun­dry room or garage. This will help you save space and effort, as you’ll have to put out your alu­minum recy­cling less often. If you use a sturdy card­board box to keep all your old news­pa­pers & junk mail­ings in, you can cut deep slits down the mid­dle of each side, lay out the twine ahead of time, and viola! An easy way to keep paper tidy and mess-free when tying it up for the recy­cling man!

I was talk­ing to a fel­low grad stu­dent here at UNM who also works in Oper­a­tions. He broke the news to me that UNM recy­cles only 30% of its paper and metal. Hav­ing worked in Admin­is­tra­tion here, I know that even with our exten­sive online sys­tems, stu­dents, fac­ulty and staff still gen­er­ate MASSIVE amounts of paper waste. When I think of all the Daily Lobos dis­carded through­out cam­pus, used up nap­kins from the Mer­cado, and the paper that paper reams come wrapped in (very meta), even 30% is a lot. Addi­tion­ally, he men­tioned to me that aside from recy­cling cop­per, UNM actu­ally loses money by recy­cling. It costs .12 more cents to recy­cle paper and most met­als than it does to toss all our trash in the local dumps. I find this sta­tis­tic wor­ri­some and a lit­tle con­found­ing. As he pointed out how­ever, the social cost we must pay for recy­cling will last for a long time before we start see­ing the ben­e­fits (as in, lesser cost to recy­cle than dump) of our actions. This, how­ever, should not dis­cour­age us from doing our share. In fact, it should light fire under our asses to get on the ball and keep using the sys­tems in place to recy­cle, as the only way to bring down these costs is to stan­dard­ize and mech­a­nize these streams of mate­r­ial. Inter­est­ingly, I also learned today that a lot of our recy­cling goes to China as raw mate­r­ial, to be returned to our coun­try later on as all the “Made in China” prod­ucts that lit­ter our homes and lives. Inter­est­ing stuff! So, keep recy­cling, or start if you haven’t already.

Reuse stuff at home: Com­ing from a fam­ily with a crafty mother, I’ve learned to look around and re-purpose stuff within my home. Like my mom, I’ve stopped throw­ing away Bueno Chile plas­tic con­tain­ers because they’re the per­fect size for a left­over side dish or extra grated cheese. The glass jars from my yummy Maranatha peanut but­ter are now used to store bulk raisins and nuts, which are bet­ter to buy because you’re not pay­ing (or wast­ing) new pack­ag­ing. You’re sav­ing money & mate­r­ial. It’s a no-lose sit­u­a­tion! How rare are those? Egg shells and cof­fee grounds have stopped going in the trash. Since I rent I’m reluc­tant to start the type of com­post pile my dad has been work­ing on for years. How­ever, grind­ing up eggshells and mix­ing them and cof­fee grounds into the soil of your house plants is an egg­cel­lent (awww!) way to reuse mate­ri­als, giv­ing directly back to the earth, and you’re able to enjoy the results directly. Recep­ta­cles, con­tain­ers, and tubs with lids are things we use every day in our lives. It shouldn’t mat­ter from whence they came, as long as they’re liv­ing out their work­ing lives serv­ing and sav­ing extra food, but­tons, or other small items.

Change your car habits: I know, I know. Eas­ier said than done, right? And here is where I con­fess a dirty, nasty secret. I live 5 min­utes away from UNM. I haven’t timed it walk­ing, but since I can get there in less time than it takes to play one of my favorite songs on my favorite dri­ving CD, I’m pretty sure that the walk­ing is less of a hard­ship and more of the good exer­cise I need any­way. My excuses include: I’m always late, I have a kid that needs a car seat, it’s cold, it’s hot, etc, etc. I have per­fectly good, ratio­nal ways to over­come each one of these obsta­cles, and yet here I am, typ­ing this at school and accu­mu­lat­ing a mas­sive park­ing struc­ture fee for the day. I read in a recent issue of the Alibi that Albu­querque was voted one of the cities best suited for bik­ing. It’s true! Our bike paths are exten­sive and fairly rider-friendly. My next big pur­chase will be a good, depend­able bicy­cle. Our tran­sit sys­tem needs some work before some of us can depend on it reg­u­larly (ever try to get from West­gate to Tramway?), but it already serves many Albu­querqueans well (my neigh­bor included, his car sits qui­etly in the yard most of the time, unmoved), and the Red and Blue Lines have done won­ders to expe­dite one’s jour­ney down Cen­tral Avenue.

In short, there are a mil­lion dif­fer­ent tiny things to do in our every­day lives that can cumu­la­tively help shift the tide of waste­ful exis­tence we’ve been born into. It’s not gonna hap­pen overnight, and being from a cul­ture that’s used to instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion and imme­di­ate results, this may be a lit­tle frus­trat­ing. How­ever, we’re all respon­si­ble for our­selves and each other, as well as the land we use for our ben­e­fit. While my inten­tion is not to sound the Holier-hippie-than-thou horn of green judg­ment, I want to encour­age every­one to take a bit of time to reflect on their use and usage. It’s a jour­ney, not an instant achieve­ment, which means we all have room for improve­ment.

Happy Earth Day!