Hey! What do you do with your cardboard toilet paper roll when you are done with them? Toss them out? Recycle them? Transform them into recycled artwork?
Well if you wouldn't mind, we would like you to collect them and bring then to us.
This year the Office of Campus Sustainability is looking to create some new programs that we hope will get people involved in changing the story about sustainability.
The pandemic has been a very strange time for everyone trying to create engaging activities on campus. Reimagining events so that people comply with COVID regulations isn't as easy as one might think. Our office has struggled to figure out how to make our events "worth" the in-person experience.
But this year we are going to work harder to find activities that let people get involved in making a more sustainable campus while learning about living a more sustainable lifestyle.
So we are asking people on campus to collect their cardboard toilet paper tubes and bring them to the Free Store (or hand towel tubes... we won't say no to those either). We will repurpose these tubes to improve the Free Store!
Okay, so I probably need to do a bit of explaining about how this works and why it is sustainable.
Firstly, we are going to use these tubes to help us sort linens and textiles in the Free Store. We can use them to make it neater and tidier in the space, and make it easier for shoppers to find what they are looking for.
Cool, a better organizational system in the store means it is easier to find things and that means people can take more of the the things they need (which hopefully means buying fewer "new" items). But does this really deserve the title of "more sustainable living"? I mean, if I recycle my cardboard tubes once I have used all the paper, isn't that already being more sustainable?
Well yes, but we can do better.
Many people tend to go right to recycling something as their default "green thing to do". But recycling isn't the best thing you can do for the planet. Look at a recycling pyramid and you will see that recycling materials takes a lot of energy and effort. We often confuse recycling and reuse. Recycling is a process that requires the deconstruction and reconstruction of materials... so when we reuse a plastic bottle it is the same bottle being used for the same purpose. But when we recycle a plastic bottle it is melted down and transformed into a new product... sometimes another bottle but mostly something else.
So when we use these cardboard tubes in the Free Store to help us sort and organize, we are "reusing" the cardboard (specifically this is adaptive reuse because we are slightly transforming them and using them for a completely different purpose). And of course this means that we don't need to use elastics which aren't recyclable in the City of Ottawa.
It might seem small, but this small gesture repeated hundreds of times will have a big impact. Besides, that's kind of the point; an easy to do thing that won't take you hours to do... just drop your old rolls off with us. And hopefully this will inspire you to think about your waste differently. Instead of tossing out your egg cartons, donate them to your local food bank.
So if you are interested in helping out with this small initiative, all you have to do is bring us your cardboard paper rolls. You can drop them off in your Free Store recycling bin located on the first floor of the Learning Crossroads Building (CRX) under the staircase.
Thank you and hopefully this is just the first of a bunch of small initiatives we can launch this year.
