It's not easy being green.

I had heard about Freerice.com, but hadn’t visited until today. Now I’m rather addicted. Turns out my latest addiction feeds people; it’s awesome. The powers that be also extended my deadline for this project, also awesome.

Wow. Today is Awesome Day.

Speaking of the liberal agenda (world hunger), I shall continue my little section on college students and their liberal-ness. Today I want to touch on the environment and how I see a bit of a departure from the liberal college student stereotype when it comes to sustaining the environment. This whole topic comes from a conversation regarding the “recycling” program in my dorm, Hassayampa.

Let me break this down; every room in Hassayampa comes with a blue recycling bin. Great right? Of course, until you take into account that the only outdoor bin to place your bags of recycled stuff is about a ten-minute walk away. Ten minutes isn’t that far or long, but when you are carrying a huge box full of a month’s worth of newspapers and no one offers to help, the distance becomes annoying. As a result of this unfortunate distance, my roommate and I haven’t taken our recycling bags out in about two months. We still recycle, but the bags just chill in the entrance to our dorm. From what I hear, most students living here use their handy little blue bins for their recycling, but the recycling bags go in the outdoor trash bin because it’s too far to walk to the recycling bin. If I didn’t complain about this regularly to my roommate, our recycling bags would end up in the trash can as well.

Teenagers don’t like to inconvenience themselves. I’m no exception. On more than one occasion this semester, my roommate and I have been victims of the low flow plumbing Hassayampa tends to brag about. It wasn’t fun, pretty, or convenient in any way. I have no idea how much water this complex saves by using low flow plumbing, but when I couldn’t shower or pee in my own bathroom, I was quite irritated.

Azcentral.com has this list of 52 things people can do to improve their green living. Some of the items are student-friendly, such as carpooling (no one wants to be a DD if they don’t have to), but others are suggestions the average student would turn down in a heartbeat. Turning off/unplugging electronics, avoiding bottled water, becoming vegetarian, turning off lights, buying used products, all these options strike me as being tasks a student wouldn’t do voluntarily.

The whole reason our environment is degrading can be attributed to mankind’s dislike of inconvenience; it’s why global warming even became an issue. I don’t know why, perhaps it’s just an egotist tendency of people my age, but I feel like college students have complete disregard for their environment.

This study compared the environmental habits of business majors with environmental studies majors. Their results aren’t outside of anything you’d predict, I just found it interesting that they picked this topic in the first place. I’m not positive this will load for everyone.

Here is another list of ways to save the environment, but it is specified for college students.

This article has to do with an increased interest in careers in alternative energy due to increased research and publicity of global warming.