1% of my life to make an impact? sure

My progress was beginning to become a problem…. each week from monday-wednesday the campus would be ripe with trash fresh from the weekends recklessness. I felt like I was on level 1 of a video game, because this was the easy part. Finding trash was like taking candy from a baby, and the more I picked up the more I felt I was helping out the environment. To satisfy my competitive nature I would count how many pieces of trash I picked up in my 15 minute sessions. Here were my results;

Monday: 30

Tuesday:21

Wednesday: 13

Thursday:14

Friday: 10

On Friday, I woke up annoyed…. why is this happening! I arduously scoped out the quad for every wrapper, can, bottle, napkin you name it. And as I trudged back to court B18 after picking up 10 pieces I looked back…

*jaw dropped*

Ok maybe my jaw didn’t drop but I sure was surprised. From Monday to Friday I think the quad and surrounding area looked much cleaner. While I was worried so much about my daily statistics I didn’t think about the bigger picture! the overall progress I was making. Its crazy how much impact 1 person can make, let me hit you with some crazy math.

5 sessions * (15 minutes) = 75 minutes of cleaning

(60 minutes/hour) * (24 hours a day) * ( 5 days) = 7200 minutes

75 minutes/ 7200 minutes = 0.0104

So approximately 1 % of my life in 5 days I spent cleaning. One person, and I can make a noteworthy difference on a campus with 2,478 undergraduates?? Mind.Blown.

Picking up trash is important not only for the environment but for the economy. “In 2005 the forgone scrap value of 135 billion wasted beverage bottles and cans exceeded 2.1 billion dollars” The value of glass ranges from 30 to 400 million dollars per year! People note the major reasons that people litter are laziness, ignorance and just don’t care. While my contribution is not anywhere near this large numbers, I thought I made a dent for a campus occupied by over 2,478 students. So what if say 5% of our population decided to do what I am doing. How much money do you think we could save?

Article I referred to below:

 http://www.greenecoservices.com/littering-facts-and-statistics/