BY ŞEBNEM TÜRE (PSYC/II) sebnem.ture@ug.bilkent.edu.tr
If you think about it, you’ll realize that everyone has something to say about politics in Turkey. However, environmental political issues are not included in this habit. We go on and on about minorities or political parties, but a question like, for instance, whether we can drink tap water, and if not, why not, is something to simply ignore.
The new restrictions on plastic bags in Turkey have changed this. The negative environmental effects of plastic bags have become a topic for discussion, although many people have taken a narrow view, dismissing the charges being imposed on plastic bags as simply a way for companies producing canvas bags to profit. In fact, the damage that plastic bags are causing, especially to sea animals, is real, and since Turkey consumes 440 plastic bags annually per person, far more than in European countries, this new policy is actually a huge step.
Policies like these that encourage people worldwide to take care of the environment are certainly the most effective measures. But even aside from them, we can all do some minor things in our everyday lives that can have major positive effects, and I’ll list some of them below. Most importantly, however, the first step toward a solution is to be disturbed, to notice environmental problems rather than regard them as something unimportant that can simply be ignored.
Print with the environment in mind
A student’s life is filled with projects, articles, books and slide shows, and at some point, or maybe even every day, we all need to go and use a printer. It’s a good idea to read/look at/work on all these things using a tablet or computer, but if you don’t have a convenient technological device, or if you’re like me and feel more comfortable with paper, you’ll continue to print. Still, you can at least do that with the environment in mind.
Most of us just forget about all those pieces of paper after midterms are over or the semester ends. Giving yourself an “expiration date” for your printouts, so that you’ll remember to put them in a recycling bin once you don’t think you’ll be using them again, is a good idea. In addition, be aware that many printers on campus print only on one side of the page. Especially when you need to do a lot of printing, you can reduce the waste by half if you use machines that print two-sided.
Bring your own cup/bottle
The coffee culture is huge today, which creates the problem of millions of coffee cups thrown out everywhere, wasted. In fact, the International Coffee Organization reports that roughly 600 billion paper and plastic cups are distributed worldwide each year, estimating that Starbucks alone is responsible for around 6 billion cups annually. Recycling is not the best solution in this case; the paper cups currently used by Starbucks are coated with a thin lining to prevent leaks, making them more challenging to recycle because the plastic isn’t easily separated from the paper. So, bringing your own cup matters! In countries like England, charges on paper cups encourage people to do this. But even though this kind of system isn’t yet in place in Turkey, we can all act with an environmentally conscious state of mind, and at least try to do the same thing. Similarly, each year 17 million barrels of oil are being used to produce disposable water bottles. To make a positive change, we can reuse the bottles we’ve already bought, or carry our own. The public fountains in the EE Building and other places on campus are there to help us reduce the use of disposable bottles.
Go public
A single person who swaps a car for public transportation to make a 20-mile round-trip daily commute can reduce 10 percent (around 4,800 pounds) of the greenhouse gas emissions produced by the average two-adult, two-car household. Society’s carbon footprint is a real contributor to global warming, and so to be part of the solution, although it may seem “cooler” to use your own car, it’s important to use public transportation where it’s available, especially when you have enough time. If you can’t do this, at least sharing the ride with others rather than driving in your car alone is a good idea.
Shake-and-fold method to reduce paper towel use
A Tedx Talk by a man named Joe Smith shows us that making one minor change in people’s behavior can have a major impact. In this case, he comes up with a catchy rule for drying your hands: shake and fold. Specifically, after washing your hands, shake them twelve times, then fold a single paper towel in half and wipe them dry. This method is so simple that once you learn it, it’s really hard to forget. It makes you aware that you may be using too many paper towels – that a single one, if folded, is actually more than enough. It also will start disturbing you when you see someone else taking four or five towels per use, since it’s not just one person but millions of people all around the globe using double, triple, quadruple the amount they need. According to Mr. Smith, in the US alone people could conserve over 571 million pounds of paper towels each year if they all kept to just one sheet. No need to emphasize how much we could conserve worldwide if we all adopted this method!