Thursday, September 04, 2008

Awareness of recycling

Yesterday, I had a chance to bring awareness of recycling without causing other people defensive.
But I missed the chance.
I regret it very much.

At a language course I'm taking, the teacher asked me what I never do as a part of an exercise to explain it in the language we are learning.
I could have said that I never throw metal cans in the garbage because it's important to recycle them.

I have been noticing that many students there are throwing them in the garbage can instead of in the box for recycling metal cans, probably because majority of the students are immigrants and they are not aware of the importance of recycling.
That bothers me a lot.

One day, I mentioned to one student that there is a box for recycling metal cans. She was very upset taking it as an accusation.
Because the box for recycling them is not located in that floor and it's only on the first floor, I made a proposal to the school to put one in each floor at least to make it easier for the students to recycle metal cans.

The school seems to be doing the best to recycle materials as much as they can.
With the constrain that the company working for them who collects papers collects only papers in the recycling bin in each class room enforcing us to put only papers in the recycling box and that the company working for them who collects metal cans only collects them from the box in downstairs, I noticed that a cleaning person picks metal cans from the garbage cans and separate them for recycling.
I appreciate the cleaning person's work very much.

At the same time, what I concern most is that those students recycle in other part of their lives outside the school settings. If they continue to throw recycling materials in the garbage, it is a huge amount of recycling materials thrown away, which is not good for environment.

So I want them to have an awareness of the importance of recycling.
And yesterday presented me a good chance to initiate to achieve it.
I hope there will be another chance.

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