As the RA of the Environmental Interest House, I’ve spent the majority of my Saturday and Sunday mornings over the last year picking up recycling from the residence halls. The first morning I went recycling, I expected to spend an hour picking up recycling. I ended up spending over three hours sifting through huge bags of unsorted recyclables and generally having my outlook and understanding of environmentalism at Whitman thoroughly walloped. Over the past semester, I’ve come to the conclusion that Whitman lifestyle necessitates a dramatic change in the way we conceptualize responsibility on campus.
I used the word recyclables above loosely. My experience has led me to the somewhat demoralizing conclusion that only a minuscule percentage of what Whitties try to recycle in residence halls is actually recyclable. Notable items I’ve found include, but are not limited to: used Q-tips, Styrofoam, moldy muffins, balls of hair, bottles half full of flat beer, chip bags, balls of hair, used tampons and plastic bags full of rotten substances once intended for compost. This is all mixed in with paper, cardboard, glass, aluminum and tin–recyclables which are supposed to be sorted, but rarely are.
Getting month-old, congealed milk spilled on my shoes during pick-up isn’t what really bothers me (though it annoys me when people don’t take the time to rinse out their cartons). Rather, what concerns me is the presence of the more serious issue of displaced responsibility, which the current state of recycling at Whitman merely hints at.
I’d always considered the average Whittie to be somewhat environmentally inclined, yet each week I’ve gotten more and more confused about the contents of the recycling. The strange mix of paper, Keystone cans and garbage in the residence halls each week can’t result from a lack of education about recycling. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the average Whittie has enough common sense to understand that old pizza slices don’t belong in the barrel labeled “aluminum.” And while it might be tempting to say that Whitman students are apathetic, I’ve found a community of caring, engaged people here, leading me to the conclusion that the problem is not that Whitman students don’t give a shit.
The paradoxical situation I’ve found myself puzzling at is this: at an institution which prides itself on having an “environmental ethic,” in a community where the students are intelligent and compassionate, how can the present state of recycling be explained?
I’ve come to the conclusion that by the very act of attending Whitman, students become distanced from their own behaviors and habits. If the act of being responsible entails holding oneself accountable, this notion of responsibility becomes problematic at Whitman.
There are under-appreciated and unseen workers in all scenes of campus life (grounds crew, security, custodial services, recycling, to name just a few) which helped us earn a 16th Princeton ranking “Runs Like Butter.” These services happen behind the scenes, and as a result, we aren’t the least bit accountable for our behaviors. We’ve essentially become dis-embedded from the ramifications our roles as consumers, students and global citizens have on other people and the environment.
I’ve seen this while picking up the recycling. When it’s so easy to drop a can or a wrapper in one of the receptacles placed conveniently all over campus, it becomes difficult to gauge the amount of waste you’re actually generating.
This disconnect between how our actions impact other people and the environment is pervasive in all aspects of campus life. When you throw a partially full beer bottle in the recycling barrel, you don’t see the Outhouse resident has to deal with it. When you leave your trash on Ankeny Field, you don’t see the grounds crew member who has to pick it up. When you leave the study lamp on in the quiet room, you don’t see the environmental degradation resulting from fossil fuel extraction.
I don’t seek to critique the services and environment Whitman provides for us. We pay a lot of money for this kind of experience and we’re fortunate to have it. But when we’re unavoidably distanced from the results of our actions as both consumers and global citizens, it becomes high time to redefine responsibility. So I do seek to pose a new question, one I hope all you Whitties will take to heart.
What does it mean to be responsible on our campus? In a world where processes from cradle to grave and production to consumption are so diffuse, I’m not sure it’s even possible to understand the full extent of the activities in which we engage.
Therefore, at the very minimum, I suggest that responsibility entails the recognition of this disconnect present at Whitman. Further, as citizens of the world and this college, we are obligated to consistently and critically engage with our own habits, questioning what we do and why we do it. If we can’t see the impacts our lifestyle has on other people or the environment, we need to ask ourselves whether our behaviors are even warranted to begin with.
And in the meanwhile, it wouldn’t hurt to rinse out your bottles before recycling them.
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