Should BK use resources to go green?
Photo Credit: Nate DeAngelis
Bridget Rooney and Nate DeAngelis
April 14, 2010
Filed under Opinion
PRO: Think about this. The amount of wood and paper we throw away each year is enough to heat 50 million homes for 20 years. Americans throw away 2.5 million plastic beverage bottles every hour, and we consume over 50 million tons of paper annually adding up to more than 850 million trees.
Although we have drastically increased our “green” efforts by decreasing the amount of waste going to U.S. landfills by 9 million tons, we are still consuming resources at an astonishingly fast rate.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. uses 25 percent of the world’s resources, but only accounts for five percent of the world’s population.
We are responsible for depleting over half of the world’s tropical rain forests, which will never be replaced. Not only has cutting down trees in the rainforest forced thousands of plants and animals to become extinct, but the burning of the rain forests accounts for 1.2 billion tons of carbon accumulated in the air each year.
Conserving our natural resources will save energy and help keep our air and water sources cleaner, along with reducing landfill space and creating jobs. In fact, “recycling creates six times as many jobs as landfilling,” according to Colorado Recycles.
In today’s economy, we need to produce as many jobs as possible. Many companies, including Bank of America, General Electric, Starbucks, Walmart, Dell and Target, have even started to hire employees who bring a competitive “green” edge that appeals to consumers and boosts business by lowering production costs through energy saving tactics. If the world’s most successful businesses are going “green,” why shouldn’t Bishop Kelley?
Although many skeptics believe that going “green” costs more money than it’s worth, many environmentally friendly actions such as switching outdated light bulbs to compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) would actually save money for the BK community. According to Touchstone Energy Cooperatives, each CFL “consumes 66 percent less energy and lasts up to 10 times longer” than average light bulbs.
Students can even save money and reduce greenhouse gases at the same time by wasting less food in the cafeteria. If Americans cut food waste by 25 percent, 65 million tons of greenhouse gases would be eliminated says the National Resource Defense Council.
The BK community does not have to make drastic changes to save money and be “green.” Every small action towards recycling and reducing energy consumption will not only improve our quality of life, it can also allow Kelley to increase funds for student scholarships, safety and technology.
CON: Is the environment important? Yes. Should we avoid littering and intentionally harming the environment? Yes. But should becoming more green be Bishop Kelley’s top priority? No. Put simply, BK has a very limited budget, and there are more productive things we could do with it.
All it takes is a look around the school to see that there are areas that need repair. The track needs to be improved or replaced. The water fountains in the main building can get so bad that they scare small children. The speech and debate team had tournaments cut last year because of budget issues. And most importantly, adequately paying our excellent staff should be a much higher priority than installing a pollution-catching canopy over the parking lot.
It isn’t like the school is some giant pollution-spewing monster. We recycle, and we have a bike-to-school club. We try to avoid unnecessary pollution and most of the students keep the environment in mind.
Those who constantly sputter out environmental propaganda would like you to believe that the world will end without your pollution-catching canopy. They give you huge numbers about the amount of trash thrown away each day and the emissions caused by cars. But if those things must change, it needs to be the responsibility of each person, not of the school. If all of the students decide they want to save the environment, they can bike to school, instead of forcing the school into buying expensive green technology. They can even buy unicycles to save on rubber pollution. The responsibility should not fall upon the school and its limited resources.
When it comes down to the bottom line, money will always be a top priority. While we would like to think that we are the saviors of the polar bears, the cost will often be a bigger influence than the environmental factor. An expensive short term investment that saves energy (and, therefore, money) in the long term is a good investment for Kelley. An expensive machine that constantly sucks money to cut emissions is not. We have to consider the budget and what we are pulling the funding from before we decide to pour money into the environment.