Colony High wants to go green at school and home

By Eva Colberg

For the Frontiersman

Recycling is an option every day at Colony High School, but it is not the only thing that students can do to reduce their carbon footprints. Thursday is Earth Day this year, but any day can be green with just a little effort.

This year will actually mark the 40th anniversary of Earth Day. The holiday was created by Wisconsin Sen. Gaylord Nelson, who was inspired to use one day to teach the nation about and celebrate the environment.

With the participation of about 20 million people in the United States alone, April 22, 1970, was the first Earth Day. Now more than ever, people all over the world are concerned about the environment, and both Earth Day and the environment are celebrated worldwide.

While Earth Day only comes once a year, Colony’s recycling program runs year-round.

Yet recycled amounts are not nearly as close to what Jan Welsh, Colony’s recycling adviser, and her class hope them to be.

“We want those recycling bins to be full every day. In other schools, we would have to pick up the recycling every day, but here we only have to do it twice a week,” says Welsh. “We don’t want people to throw things away.”

But that is part of the problem. Students are passing over the recycling bins to throw away things that could be recycled. Welsh and her class will take practically any paper, cardboard, plastic or aluminum product. The only exceptions are waxed products and items that have food residue, like a paper plate with pizza grease and sauce left on it.

Recycling is just one of the many ways to help the environment, and while it makes a substantial difference, it is not the only thing that can be done.

While certain green actions like turning off the sink when brushing teeth and turning off the lights when not in a room have been repeated to the point of redundancy, some teenagers want to do more than flipping a switch. The fact that most teens still are under the rules of their parents or other guardians can hinder further actions like purchasing eco-friendly, organic and local products. But there are still more simple ways to help that do not require parental cooperation that any teenager can do.

Simply paying attention when charging any electronic device can help. Unplugging it as soon as it has reached maximum charge keeps it from sucking energy and helps the battery last longer as well.

Only running the dishwasher and washing machines when full reduces water heating energies and costs, as does letting both plates and clothes air-dry. Using the cool water setting every time for clothing not only saves more heating energy, but helps the garments last longer. Removing excess weight from the car can lessen gas consumption by lightening the load, and even Internet search time can be made green.

Using Blackle, Google’s answer to using less energy during search time by displaying results on a black background with white text uses less energy to light up the screen. Goodsearch.com is also a smart choice, as the search engine donates to any charity of the user’s choice for every link clicked on. In fact, there is a plethora of information for environmentally conscious living available on the Internet, with many websites and blogs dedicated solely to green lifestyle choices.

Earth Day is just around the corner, and it provides the perfect opportunity to spread some Earth love. But even when the day passes, anyone can still make green decisions with minimal effort, making every day a green day.

Eva Colberg is a sophomore at Colony High School.