Eye Opener: Photo Essay

For my photo essay I decided to take some pictures around campus of the different trash and recycling bins. I wanted to see if the students on the University of Minnesota Duluth campus were using the bins appropriately. I found it somewhat discouraging that when I looked in some of the trash bins I would see aluminum cans and plastic bottles and there would be a recycling bin right next to the trash. It is unfortunate that some people are just too lazy to put a little bit more effort into helping the environment and recycle.

Take a look at some of the pictures I took when going around the UMD campus.

These are some of the recycling bins that can be found in the Kirby Student Center on campus. As you can see there are places to recycle aluminum, plastic and paper right next to the trash so it shouldn't be to hard for anyone to put their items in the appropriate bins.

I actually found out when doing this project that although the bins say CANS ONLY you can now deposit plastic in them as well. I think signs should be changed so students know this. I can't tell you how many times I have walked around campus with my plastic bottle looking for a bin.

This is one of the CANS ONLY bins. I am wondering if some students know that you can put plastic in these bins now whereas others don't, or if they just disregard the signs.

This is an example of another cans only bins. We have to make sure that they are getting emptied regularly because as you can see this bin is overflowing. It is keeping some people from recycling :(

This is another example of the bins that are provided for trash, paper, aluminum and plastic. Another interesting component of the device above is the fact that all the bins surrounding the 3 larger bins (alum, plas, paper and trash) are provided to students to charge there computer throughout the day. This is yet another thing I found when looking around campus.

This is a bag of trash I found on the second floor of Bohannon hall. As you can see there are many recyclable items that have been thrown in the trash. We need to stop trashing things that are recylable to stop the rapid filling of landfills.

The following two pictures were found in one of the bathrooms on campus. I just found it interesting to see that there are more efforts being made for going green on campus than just recycling.

This label was found on the soap dispenser. Stating that "This dispenser contains Green Seal Certified Hand Soap."

This label was found on the dryer. There were no paper towels available for use in this bathroom. Just the dryer. Again it is refreshing to see that efforts are being made to cut down on the amount of trash we produce on campus.

I hope you enjoyed my photo essay and learned a few things along the way.