‘Earth Day’ should be every day not one day

Every year, holidays come and go. With each holiday, we tend to make promises to do better, and to create a lifestyle that befits the holiday.

Although Earth Day is not a religious or political holiday, it falls under the days that we make a promise to do better for ourselves, our children and for the future. Like many people around the world, I try to make sure that I litter less or become more Earth-conscious.

Promises begin to formulate and for that day (maybe a couple more days), we work hard to make sure that we alter our habits for a better cause.

At first, the changes seem realistic, but as time goes on it appears to be harder to maintain a level of cleanliness that could possibly stop the deterioration of the Earth and its' properties.

On my way to school, I was listening to the Kid Kraddic show as Psycho Shannon gave humorous tips on how to be green.

Though the tips were funny, she also said that we should not wait until Earth Day to make changes and pointed out that the opportunity for change is available to us all year.

At DMC, the campus announced Earth Day activities with (what appeared to be) thousands of paper flyers.

Perhaps administrators felt that this was the best way to inform the student population of events, but in reality the production and distribution of the flyers is actually counterproductive to "going green."

There are plenty of "green" avenues available to the school outside of printing flyers, most of which will not be recycled anyway since even though the campus makes "recycle only" bins available, the contents are often not actually recycled.

Students, faculty and staff use most of those bins as regular trashcans, and at the end of the day, the trash bags are lifted out of the bins and placed in with the rest of the trash.

Students may be under the impression that they are doing their part by placing recyclables in their appropriate place only to find out that it's all thrown away.

One would have to ask, however, what you do to maintain these bins specifically for recycling? The City of Corpus Christi's recycling center does not appear a widely developed enough operation for the community to use for long-term goals.

The center is available in some areas, but for the most part, recyclers have to travel to the boondocks of Corpus Christi to recycle.

While at a conference in Austin, I was on my way to workshop when I noticed, out of the corner of my eye, a long table that turned out to be four bins attached to each other for various forms of recyclables.

I am not entirely sure that such a contraption would be successful here in Corpus Christi, but I for one would be willing to at least test the use of a four-canister bin for each of the recyclables: paper, plastic, glass and organics.