For this eye opener we were to find a topic that interested us and then document it through photographs that we take. The topic that I went with was recycling and sustainability on campus here at UMD. I walked around the outside and inside of the various buildings here on campus to find what our campus is doing to recycle and promote sustainability. The following photos are various things I found across campus that I feel reflect my chosen topic.
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One of the first things I came across while walking around campus where these recycling devices. The unique recycling bins collect a variety of different recyclable items and compress them to improve total storage. The coolest part of the whole process is that these devices are solar powered, which means that they're pretty green! I have just a few photos of them hear, but these guys are all over the place on campus.
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This photo is of an ash receptacle that I found outside of football field. I found it a little odd to have an ash receptacle on a smoke free campus at first, but I reasoned that it might be used to collect the ash from some others sources (i.e. Hand warming barrels). Should that be the case, ash can be good for plant growth and by collecting it could be put to good use in the spring.
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As I moved to the interior of campus I began to scan around for receptacles that would be used for recycling. Almost immediately I came across a variety of recycling bins.
The first type of recycling bin I came across was this blue paper only bin. Though I understand the importants and need to separate the various types of recyclables, I question how many people actually stop to use a paper only recycling bin in the hallway.
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These two photos are of different types of bottle/can recycling bins found around campus. The first photo has separate holes to keep plastics and cans away from each other. The second photo is taken from within a bin that only has one hole and is meant for cans only. It is good to see numerous recycling bins around campus but I find it frustrating when I have to search for bins that are meant for my particular recyclable, which takes me to my next photo...
As you can see from looking though the gumball machine there is one of every type of recycling bin sitting next to each other. I often see cans in plastic only bins and vice versa, so I feel it's both effective and necessary to keep all types of recycling bins near each other.
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These last three photographs are of some interesting measures that our campus is taking to become more sustainable.
This is a photo of a water bottle re-filler that I found on campus. There are only a few of these on campus at this time but they are rather useful. These devices promote sustainability by making it easy to get good water and reinforcing the behavior to do so by letting fillers know how much plastic bottle waste they're preventing.
This is a photo description of an innovative toilet found in the civil engineering on campus. In short, these toilets are able to use water amounts specific to the user's needs. This cuts back on excess water waste and promotes water conservation. The downside is that there still are very few toilets with this feature on campus.
This final photo is of a program proposal I found in the engineering building. I don't know how old it is or how well the program has panned out, but it was cool to see that our students here on campus are getting opportunities to find solutions to environmental problems.
On the whole, I would say that our university is doing a pretty awesome job recycling and making it easy for students to recycling as well. I also like the steps that UMD is taking to become more sustainable and green by implementing various service devices on campus that have smaller impacts on the environment. That said, UMD still seems to be in the start up phase of becoming more sustainable and I feel that we have a long ways to go before we can get too excited about anything.
