Environmentally friendly- that’s a title every business wants to be associated with.
University of Tampa cannot be left behind; being a private, well established college they strive to be known as environmentally friendly.
I would say it is more of the image associated with the title than the responsibility that businesses really desire.
The question is, are they really environmentally friendly? Let’s take a closer look, a bit closer to home.
Recycle bins surround every dining location. Ash trays outnumber the number of recycle bins by double all around campus.
Pages are filled with activities taken on by the college and student organizations to show that they are taking social responsibility, but all these activities do is create a deceptively positive image.
If one was to analyze the effects of these activities it would be clear that they do little to protect and conserve the environment.
Recycling bins do their part in conservation.
They allow products to be re-used, but more can be done apart from recycling.
Encouraging people to use products that can be used repeatedly would reduce the materials that need to be recycled.
It would be a more effective and efficient way to conserve the environment. Plus, it works better when applied along with recycling.
At the end of each semester, dorm rooms and waste bins are filled with items that could be used again, for example, sofas, electronic devices and so on.
A lot of resources go into making such durable stuff, but after a semester or two these products find themselves in a garbage bin.
Some of these things can be donated to charities or passed on to incoming freshmen and this would reduce waste.
Eventually, if done on a large scale, resources will be used more efficiently and positive effects of conservation become evident.
Ash trays do even less than recycle bins. Cigarette smoke is the highest contributor after car fumes to destruction of the environment, not to mention the health hazard it has on non-smokers and smokers.
The reasoning behind putting ash trays everywhere is acknowledged and taken in good faith; however, its implications have a greater inverse effect.
It is logical that if you increase the amount of ash trays and surround every location possible with them, smoking is encouraged.
Smokers will be more likely to smoke where there is an ash tray; hence, smoking increases as the number of ash trays increase.
How is increasing the amount of smokers helping anything?
At the end of the day, the solution has become a problem.
There are better ways to manage cigarette smoking that do not have a large, disproportionate inverse effect.
For instance – creating smoking zones at specific locations that aren’t frequented by many people.
This limits smoking which to a larger extent protects the environment and non-smokers from the adverse effects that accompany smoking.
It is killing two birds with one stone – after all what non-smoker wouldn’t be better off with less smoke in their lungs?
All actions undertaken are to be encouraged.
Don’t get me wrong. I discuss them in good faith, but if we as a community really want to go green these activities need to be undertaken repeatedly and over a sufficiently long period of time for their effects to be seen.
It occurred to me that, a reason why such effects to go green are taken lightly is because results of actions undertaken to be environmentally friendly cannot be seen. Individuals want to see the result of the actions they undertake.
When a lot of effort is put in for a good result, that result is expected otherwise one has little or no motivation to continue.
At times many individuals, organizations, and businesses have strived to be environmentally friendly but have not seen the fruits of their labor; hence they do the least so as to maintain the image of taking on social responsibility.
We are all told to do our bit to protect and conserve our environment, but what we aren’t told is to do it fully and consistently.
This is the message businesses should send out when being environmentally friendly; that they are doing their best to be environmentally friendly and not just giving a one time show.
Camilla Chebet can be reached at cchebet@spartans.ut.edu
Camille,
Thanks for replying, I greatly appreciate the courtesy.
The direct matter of cigarette smoking rests atop several deeper issues, such as as personal liberty and public interest, that run to the heart of how we perceive our world and desire to shape it. Since I’m biased against smoking (but do not seek to restrict liberties in its reduction), I’ll preclude myself from its defense, leaving that for Libertarians.
Wasted resources and effort, even if in the worthy pursuit of a better environment, obviously won’t bring this goal any closer. Public opinion gets set very firm and very fast after a bad experience, and often little can be done to change it afterwards. Everything may beyond our control, but certainly not every choice available is appropriate. With this in mind, since a third of the article was devoted to ash trays and an idea I felt was mistaken, I’d argue that my comment was relevant despite being poorly written.
Looking back at the piece, for clarity I should have included the sentences before and after the one I quoted. They’re very explicit. The logic still elude me, which may be a failure on my part. If those ash trays were removed tomorrow, I can’t imagine such a slight gesture impacting the decisions of smokers to reduce their daily output.
In regard to discarded cigarette butts, their absence indicates the diligence of the maintenance staff and (I hope) the conscientiousness of the Spartan community. As proof, a Lexis-Nexis search for a 29 May 2009 New York Times article titled, “Cigarette Butts: Tiny Trash That Piles Up” by Leslie Kaufman should suffice.
Let’s say that designated smoking zones become established around campus. Instead of heading for the nearest exit during a class break, smokers now congregate there. The amount of smoke expelled into the air remains the same, only its sources have been moved to different locations. If it’s the second largest source of pollution after cars, wouldn’t this be like trading in one big gas-guzzler for another?
This concentration of smokers in the zones would mean that any passerby downwind could be exposed to much greater levels than if the smokers were distributed across separate entrances around a building. But this relates more to the tangential issue of health effects, and I know you were focusing more on the environmental impact. Also, on a side note, the issue of enforcement of the smoking zones again plunges into the deeper issues of personal freedoms verse public interests, so I’ll close on that same dilemma I’ll dodged in the beginning!
Thanks again and I wish you the best of luck with your endeavors.
MJ
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. However,would like to dispute some of your claims.
Firstly, your comparison between peer influence and increase of ash trays is as close as a comparison as that between oranges and apples. In the sentence you quoted, increase in smoking is in the context of ash trays the focus being actions to be environmentally friendly that are not effective. You seem to have confused it with influences of smoking. If this article was centered on smoking and the environment i would commend your contribution, however, since that is not the case,I believe that you are speaking out of context.
With regard to your second sentence, I am aware of the purpose of ash trays, and your assumption that cigarette butts can be found near entrances in areas with no ash trays is a misconception and you have provided no notable evidence to support such a claim. Personally, I have not observed that.
I would like to reiterate that when I am discussing smoking it is in the context of the environment. For the large part of your comment you are speaking out of context. The point I am trying to get across is that it is less environmentally friendly to do nothing about cigarette smoke which is a huge contributor to destruction of the environment, yet to pretend to be concerned about the environment by providing ash trays. it is as if to say,” don’t throw your cigarette buts everywhere, but spread the smoke wherever you like”. The remedy has little or no effect considering what action destroys the environment more.
Furthermore, non-smokers should not have to suffer for the bad hazardous habits of smokers. They should not be the ones to suffer through lung cancer because a group of smokers could not be bothered to blacken their lungs elsewhere.
Environmental protection is undertaken by people, individuals unless you suggest other beings intelligent enough to reason and act, i doubt that any other thing or animal would undertake actions to protect the environment. Therefore, the call to action is directed to those who can act. you can only change what you can influence, everything is is beyond our control.
“Smokers will be more likely to smoke where there is an ash tray; hence, smoking increases as the number of ash trays increase.”
Imagine a smoker, sitting in class and craving a cigarette…because ash trays sit by the entrances of buildings? That’s very implausible given the nature of nicotine addiction, to say the least.
Compared to peer influence, ash trays do nothing to increase the appeal of smoking. And those receptacles serve the sole purpose of litter prevention; in locales with smoking zones away from entrances, strewn piles of used butts around entryways invariably appear. That certainly advertises that litter isn’t a priority, which often leads to more of the same.
Smoking disgusts many like myself, but people have the freedom to engage in it outdoors as they wish. If there’s a massive cloud of smokers gathered by a door, either use another entrance or hold your breath momentarily.
To possibly dissuade people from smoking, I suggest looking into the potential e-cigarette solution to work towards a future of clean the air for everyone.
An otherwise noble cause, environmental protection suffers from bad publicity when it treats people as hazards to be mitigated.