One piece of trash a day keeps the pollution away

Wow! I guess you could say I feel a little spoiled….. while my carbon footprint calculator was below the national average my ecological footprint said if everyone lived like me we would need 4.8 planet earths full of resources to sustain my lifestyle! When I walk around campus I don’t feel like I am the spoiled resource hungry brat and while that is comforting it is also a little scary….. Our campus is a big part of the problem. So while I was walking around campus I pondered how I could better the environment locally, In Easton, to help better the world. I came up with the answer when I walked up to a bush littered with cans of Miller Light.

One of the big questions in the ecological footprint calculator is how much trash we compile every week. Our Campus becomes natures garbage can overnight! Especially on the weekends! Everyday I see trash littered all over campus, things that can be recycled and reused to reduce our consumption of resources such as plastic cans and bottles. So for my Sustainable Behavior Resources Challenge I  vowed to pick up one piece of trash everyday. Whether it is a can,plastic bottle or sandwich wrapper in the hopes that I can help clean up our campus and stop wasting resources. I will also make a more concerted effort to find a trash can and/or recycling bin so I am not picking up my own problems. If I do this everyday for the rest of the semester I would pick up over 50 pieces of trash! Land pollution can pollute the soil, disturb the balance of our fragile ecosystems, and disrupt the beauty that is Lafayette College. I just hope that by my simple action I can one day walk in a clean environment without finding a couple beer cans adorning the bushes!