If you live in Florida, and you are not constantly acting in the best interest of the environment: Wake up. We are the first ones going under when it all goes bad. The least we can do is be semi-conscious of the small things we can change to better the environment.
Before I leave the house, I always make sure to turn off all the lights. In my dorm at UF, there was a sticker around the light switch that said “Gators Save Energy.” Itwas a reminder to flip off the light switch every time I left the room. Now I can’t step foot outside of a lit-up room. You should always turn the lights off and remind your friends to do it, too. Go out of your way to turn them off, because the environmental benefits are greater than the small inconvenience.
A big pet peeve of mine is when people say that drinks taste better through plastic straws. In my experience, they simply do not. Water tastes like water, and it always will. I admit that paper straws are kind of the worst, but their rising popularity has led paper straw vendors to try to make them more durable. Some people reason the effect of singularly using plastic straws is minute compared to all of the plastic waste in the world, but reducing plastic waste has to start somewhere. According to The Last Plastic Straw, a website whose mission is to educate people on the dangers of single use plastic, 500 million straws are used in the U.S. every day. This is enough straws to wrap around the earth 2.5 times. Cutting straws out of your life is easy and a good first step toward sustainable living.
Another really easy way to stop wasting plastic is to get a reusable water bottle. UF makes filling up your bottle fun with fountains that count how many plastic bottles have been saved by that fountain. I used to hope I would be the 100,000th bottle filled in the fountain I used every day before class. Some of the most popular bottles out right now are Hydro Flasks and Nalgenes. In addition to damaging the environment, single-use water bottles are an unnecessary expense.
It’s underrated how cool UF is for being a very sustainable school. There are recycling bins all over the place, and many of UF’s paper products are compostable. Environment Florida is currently petitioning UF to pledge to be a 100 percent green campus by 2050. The Office of Sustainability at UF is active and keeps students and faculty updated with progress made on green initiatives.
Being environmentally conscious isn’t hard when we realize the positive effects of our smallest actions. If everyone starts thinking about the environment in their daily lives, doing these small things will become second nature. Our generation will be alive to see the first obvious signs of global damage. Climate change is already very real, and it will only continue to worsen. We don’t have anywhere else to live.
You don’t need to dive in and do anything drastic. You don’t need to commit to a waste-free life or go vegan tomorrow. Showing love to the Earth can come in many different forms. Turn off your lights, use paper straws, buy a water bottle, take short showers and think about your carbon footprint. All the cool kids are doing it.
Molly Chepenik is a UF journalism sophomore. Her column appears on Wednesdays.
Photo by Gabriel Gurrola on Unsplash
