Recycling: Is it Overkill?

The most popular Green activity is recycling.  You've heard about it for years.  The most valuable action that we lost through our Grandparent's generation is conservation.  Do you remember your Grandmother or someone talking about how their Grandmother used to wash their aluminum foil and then fold it or add it to a ball that they had started?  Nothing hardly ever was thrown away.  Then we became impatient and said, "That's too much trouble" and threw it in the kitchen trash can. Now we are scrambling to educate our younger generations the importance of reducing their waste because our lack of proper action that has put us into an environmental crisis.

In our home we recycle aluminum and ask other homes that do not recycle for their cans.  A few years ago, I asked my youngest daughter if her high school had a recycling program.  She said, "No."  I was shocked; because her high school was only 4 years old and had around 4,000 students.  I was amazed that one of the clubs had not jumped on this idea to make money. 

In an effort to help my daughter make some spending money, I told her to ask the high school if a she could put collection containers by the drink vending machines.  She came back with yes, she could because there was no recycling program and they didn't see any harm in it.  Although, she never took advantage of this opportunity to make extra money, the whole idea of not having a recycling program in a high school was just foreign to me.

Here in our county we have 12 mega high schools.  How many do you think has a regular recycling program? 

At an environmental network meeting the other week a person asked me if I thought we had made real progress in environmental education.  My answer is...you can pretty much guess...