Life at college is so different from life at home in so many ways. One of the things I noticed during my first year was the way I was buying things. All of a sudden I was buying paper towels, using plastic utensils, buying plastic water bottles, eating heavily packaged food, and not recycling. I had a reusable water bottle that I frequently would stop using just because it was easier to buy a water bottle then wash the reusable one. It was as if I had gone to college and magically forgotten all the little things that you can do for the environment I had learned over the years.

One day, while I was throwing out my empty yogurt container because I didn't want to walk down the hall to wash it out and recycle it, I glanced in the trash. I realized I was not alone in the choices I was making. Keeping in mind there is a recycling bin directly across the hall from the trashcan, I looked in and saw papers, plastic bottles, glass bottles, plastic food containers, and cardboard boxes, all things that belong in the recycling bin. I was a little horrified, but not quite horrified enough to take my yogurt container to the kitchen to wash.

Here's the thing as college students we are supposed to be socially and environmentally aware. We are in school learning about the world we live in and the ways we are destroying it. Many of us are taking environmental science classes, or even majoring in it, and although we know that little things can make a big difference we are not acting on this knowledge. For me at least, I was so much better at recycling, using a reusable water bottle and coffee mug, and buying things with limited packaging at home. I know that for many college students the ease of the product seems to far outway the environmental impact of what we are buying but that doesn't mean what we are doing is right.

If we truly care about the environment of the world we live in, we need to make sure that we are doing the little things to help improve that world. It's great that we are working for change, fighting for legislation, and inspiring others to care for the environment but it's important that we look at ourselves and our choices as well. We should be the examples instead of a huge part of the problem.