"Knock knock"
"Who's there?"
"Green rep"
"Green Rep who?"
"No seriously dude, turn off the light when you go to bed. You're wasting energy. And while you're at it, milk cartons go into the plastics recycling bin... not the paper one."
They say that university is one of the big turning points in life. While in university you will likely pick up a lot of the habits and skills that you will carry with for the rest of your life. Fact checking and proper sourcing for sure, but what about those habits that will help our society become more sustainable?
There are a tonne of environmental issues out there. I could dedicate the rest of this blog post to them and you wouldn't finish reading until early tomorrow morning. But I can sum up the majority of them with two simple words, 'resource consumption'. The more stuff you use, the more stuff we need to make, the more resources get drained, etc.
But did you know that the majority of decisions about what to consume happen at home? So that's why we invented the Green Reps program. Green Reps are volunteers that live in residences and are the ambassadors for the planet. They help spread information about programs and environmental issues so that we can all make more informed choices.
So let's cut to the chase. It's important that people learn about these issues as soon as possible, like in first year. The sooner that someone is exposed to environmental programs on campus, the sooner they start to use them and the sooner they will reap the benefits.
For example, if you use your own reusable mug to buy coffee you will save about $40 a year (25 cents for every week day for two semesters). So by the end of your university career, you will have saved $160 bucks (assuming a 4 year degree). And by the your 45th birthday you will have saved over a thousand dollars. Not to mention a couple of trees, a few tonnes of water, and maybe the planet.
Or maybe you learn to recycle all your waste instead of tossing it in the garbage. The average Canadian produces 2.7 kilos of waste a day. That's one tonne every year. Over your university career that means you will toss out the equivalent weight of a pick up truck. By the time you are 25, that would be as much as an adult African elephant. Or... you could recycle it and not produce any of that waste.
There's more... so much more. But you are going to have to join to learn all about it/
You can check out details about the program on our website.
~jON - campus sustainability managerphoto credit - modified melanie armstrong image