The grass could be greener

THE GRASS COULD BE GREENER

The Earth is slowing dying: saving her starts by making changes to be more eco-friendly.

WORDS BY Cheyenne Petitpas

PHOTOS BY Jenna Breedlove & Anna Lawrence

On June 22, 1969, the impossible happened: a river caught on fire.

The Cuyahoga River was so polluted that floating debris in the water caught fire from the sparks of a passing train.

This wasn’t the first time the river caught fire either. The Cuyahoga River caught fire 13 times since 1868 and was once named the most polluted river in the United States. With the fire’s 50-year anniversary approaching, now is the perfect time to take a step back and evaluate our environmental contributions.

The fire was a tipping point in environmental awareness and encouraged laws to be established in order to help the environment. One was the National Environmental Policy Act, which “promotes the enhancement of the environment.” Another was the Pollution Superfund, a government controlled fund that stores money away to ensure that a company’s pollution can be cleaned up if it goes out of business and leaves the area.

Young sprouts basking in the midday sunlight on a ledge inside Kent State’s Herrick Conservatory.

Photo by Jenna Breedlove.

The responsibility is not just on industries, though. For years I’ve been guilty of not looking into my habits. Recently, I started to delve into the eco-friendly lifestyle and think more carefully about my actions.

According to Melanie J. Knowles, the manager of the Sustainability Department at Kent State, there is a shared responsibility between producers and consumers in terms of being environmentally sustainable.

Knowles mentions the phrase “reduce, reuse, recycle,” and how the words are listed in order based on effectiveness. Knowles asks, “How can we reduce, what is reusable and for what is left to recycle? What is the easiest way to do that?”

The answer is environmental sustainability. Knowles describes environmental sustainability as a condition benefiting all three pillars: environment, equity and economics. Something is environmentally sustainable if it is helpful to the environment, beneficial, convenient for people and doesn’t plummet the economy.

The Fern and Humidity Loving Plant Collection at Kent State’s Herrick Conservatory.

Photo by Jenna Breedlove.

When people don’t go the extra foot to help Earth, I’ve noticed it’s because it’s inconvenient and not a habit. People don’t realize it’s easy to start a new habit and rid of harmful habits with ecofriendly ones.

Aramark, Kent State’s food service provider, is introducing changes encouraging sustainability. Aramark sells reusable bags and mugs in their markets to promote reusable materials, including reusable straws.

The plastic straw controversy is one that encourages a lot of people, including me, to take their first step in being eco-friendly.

Plastic straws, among other plastics, are harmful to marine life, specifically sea turtles. Straws usually end up in the ocean where they’re broken down into microplastics which some marine life may mistake for food. The University of Georgia’s New Materials Institute conducted an experiment in which 96 sea-turtles were studied and every one had some amount of plastic in their system. While 27 were rehabilitated, the rest died with the suspected cause being from “blockages or nutritional deficiencies associated with plastic ingestion.”

Simply recycling straws is also not the answer. According to For A Strawless Ocean, an organization that strives to remove and stop the plastic pollution in the oceans, plastic straws are too small to make it through the sorting process in recycling factories. Plastic straws end up slipping through the grates, contaminating the recycling load or just getting thrown out anyway. Not to mention the plastics straws are made from isn’t recyclable to begin with.

In response, many companies started selling glass or metal reusable straws. Buying a pack of reusable straws is an inexpensive way to make a big difference. I knew plastic straws were bad, but it wasn’t until I came to Kent that I was encouraged to use them. I ordered myself a pack off Amazon the day after I saw my friend use one. They even sell reusable straws at the on-campus bookstore, which I also happily purchased.

Another simple way to cut out plastic use is by using reusable water bottles.

While plastic water bottles can be recycled it’s not an easy process, and it’s still plastic being used that doesn’t need to be. With the plethora of fountains around campus, including many with water bottle filling stations, you can top off your bottle for free as much as you want.

Sydney Townsend, the founder and president of the Kent Sustainability Club, suggests using a collapsible water bottle. It not only reduces the use of plastic bottles, but it’s made of silicon, which doesn’t add plastic to the environment. The best part is it’s collapsible, so it can fit in a purse or backpack.

Townsend explains she turned against any type of plastic after watching documentaries. She recalls learning that, “there’s no way that plastic can be safe.” Even BPA free plastics are still harmful to the environment and humans.

Making a small change can create a ripple effect and make a difference in the way we’re treating our world. Plastic bags have alternatives, for instance. Some stores have an in-store bin to properly recycle plastic bags for you while paper and reusable bags cut down on plastic waste altogether.

The smallest of actions can help the Earth, but there’s still a problem with the recycling system.

A big issue with recycling, especially on Kent’s campus, is the lack of knowledge about it. Most people don’t know what is recyclable and what isn’t. People then give up trying to recycle and throw recyclables landfills, or they recycle something that contaminates the recycling stream. A survey through Kent’s Sustainability Department questioned students on things like if they recycle, what they recycle, their knowledge about recycling and if they don’t recycle, why that is.

I never know what’s able to be recycled unless there’s the nifty little triangle on the bottom of it. Before, I’d usually just throw something in the recycling and hope it works, but I wasn’t aware that doing that resulted in contamination.

Knowles explains the recycling streams on campus and how they work. The idea is to get as many recyclables as possible, which she believes is advantageous for Kent. However, Knowles adds that, “even if people only put in recyclable items, there is a bit of contamination that happens.”

America used to send recyclables to China to be sorted and recycled, but issues arose that created the National Sword, a restriction from China on recyclables we send over. The National Sword wants a contamination rate of less than .5 percent, but U.S. recycling facilities believe it’s not possible to sort materials and end up with a contamination rate of less than one-half of one percent.

Some people worry that even if they do recycle, the materials aren’t actually getting recycled. To fight these claims, Kent has videos on their sustainability/recycling page proving what happens when something is put into a recycling bin. The video shows everything that is put in the bins gets recycled.

Angela Diebel, a sustainability minor notices the bins and dumpsters for recycling are always smaller than the one’s for the landfill. She mentions a study conducted at Kent State to find out if smaller plates, as opposed to bigger plates, helped control portion sizes and helped students lose weight.

David Sharp, a nutrition professor at Kent State, comments on this experiment. “When we are bombarded with the appeal of getting things bigger or larger, it creates a bit of dissonance that the message for our most intimate choices such as our meals, our plates and our bodies runs opposite to our culture of plenty when considering long-term health and wellness,” he says. The experiment found smaller plates make it seem as though there’s more food in one serving. On a bigger plate, the servings look smaller.

“When it comes to filling up the bin, it’s a very similar mindset,” Diebel says. Naturally, you want to fill up empty space. If recycling bins were bigger the trash bins, they would take more recyclables to fill it up. We would want to see it full, and it would encourage us to recycle more to do so. In turn, the more we recycle, the bigger recycling bins we’ll get and the more frequently that recycling will be picked up.

Trash and recycling bins around campus depict what should be recycled or thrown away.

Photo by Anna Lawrence.

Another issue is the carbon footprint we’re leaving.

While we know fossil fuels are terrible for the environment, the alternative energy sources we’ve discovered are either expensive to use or aren’t as accessible as we’d like.

Solar power is healthy for the planet, but it takes up a large area to get a strong amount of power. Powering cars with electricity helps with the O2 emissions from normal cars, but when it comes from the wall socket, it’s burning all the coal we’re trying to avoid.

There’s an answer many don’t know about, and I didn’t even know about until visiting Kent’s Clean Energy and Sustainability Lab. Here, Deibel gave me a tour and the rundown on reducing our carbon footprint.

It’s called a fuel cell. As Diebel puts it, “It’s a magical black box.” Think of it like a car battery. It comes as big or as small as needed, and it doesn’t release any of the harmful chemicals into the air that burning coal does. Fuel cells are actually more powerful than the coal-firing plants we’re accustomed to; they can even power vehicles. Kent has a golf cart that is known as a Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV), and it’s the sustainability lab’s pride and joy.

Fuel cells work by simple chemistry: by combining hydrogen and oxygen, H20 is created. The process generates electricity with the only byproduct being water - which means no harmful emissions. They can even be used as the power source for wall sockets, which prevents inconveniences.

With all this in mind, hopefully improvements can continue to be made for the Earth. Earth Month in April is the best time to get involved and get educated on environmental sustainability.

Earth Month is celebrated at Kent State with campus-wide acknowledgment, support, education, motivation and opportunity for being eco-friendly. There are events including plant sales, planting trees around campus and more.

“It’s just one person” is a commonly accepted excuse for not taking five seconds to help the earth. If everyone used this ideology, change would never happen. Change has to start somewhere, and it starts with one person wanting to make even a sliver of a difference. Humans tend to copy each other in their actions. When someone sees a peer recycling, they want to recycle. When someone sees a metal straw being used, they don’t want to use a plastic one for their drink. Even if you think your small action won’t make a difference, it’s still a crumb better than before. Every single action from every single person matters.

The more educated consumers are, the less they’ll support environmentally harmful companies. The more people avoid using plastic straws at restaurants, the more restaurants will be encouraged to phase plastic straws out. Townsend mentions “putting in your vote for a product” has a huge impact, and what you put money toward reflects what the company produces: don’t support companies that aren’t environmentally conscious. With increasing company ethics transparency, it’s easy to see which companies should be supported and which ones shouldn’t. I found it easier than expected to take a few extra seconds to see if my product was in a recyclable container, if its company supports sustainability and even make sure there aren’t harmful substances in my products.

Saving our world starts with us and our actions. Don’t be part of the problem. Be part of the solution.

CHEYENNE PETITPAS | cpetitpa@kent.edu