Substance Packaging Littered throughout DU: Case Lee Nick

As Humes wrote in his evaluation of William Rathje’s work, “In garbage, though, there are no half-truths, no spin, no politics...How they lived, what they wore, where their trade routes reached, even how and who they worshipped -- all of that, and so much more, is contained in the record of their garbage,”(Humes 146). Fortunately, we did not have a task as challenging as studying an ancient civilization through their trash but only a college campus. However, even that was intimidating for the three of us. So we narrowed it down by only looking at substance trash such as alcohol, cigarettes and chewing tobacco. Also we avoided all of the Instagram pictures that either didn’t give a location or gave one that was not nearby one of the three freshman dormitory halls (Centennial Towers, Centennial Halls and Johnson McFarlane) because we were focusing on freshmans’ consumption habits and this was the only plausible way we could think of.

What we found was that litter around Centennial Halls had four times as many beer bottles than the other two buildings combined. Halls also had more cigarettes than the other two buildings combined, and was the only one that students found chewing tobacco cans around. Now does this mean that students in Halls are consuming four times as much alcohol as the other buildings’ occupants combined? Probably not but there is an underlying trend of a tendency to litter by halls residents. Maybe this has something to do with the lack of eco-friendliness of the facility. Without composts in the bathrooms or even garbages around the dorm, residents could have slowly become less caring about whether they throw something out, because recycling is not encouraged. According to an experiment conducted by our group, where we interviewed people on the street at night, we found that people are more likely to litter while intoxicated. Could Halls be the degenerate dorm?

There are differing supporting evidence but also flaws to our data. One possibility could lie in the process of collecting the data. How many students in this class are from Halls and if any specific individuals had habits of uploading pictures of used substances could skew the data. Another possibility is that students from Centennial Towers like to keep their surroundings relatively clean and make efforts to drop their trash either on their way to or back from class while passing Halls. Also the fact that Halls and Towers are on the outer rim of campus and do not have the most extensive landscaping could lead to students feeling less attached to the land around it than students in J-Mac and therefore feel less guilty when littering.

The environment is the most important thing in our life because it provides us with life. Yet the students in the dorms, particularly the ones in Centennial Halls, do not realize this. They need to understand that throwing trash away properly is as important as breathing because if we sicken the environment, we sicken the air. They should also take pride in their campus. I hope that as they get older, they will become more environmentally conscience and will care about the campus more.