This time try to find the right hole...

Finishing off my third Starbucks frappuccino at two in the morning, a mere six hours from my first final, I staggered down the hallway of Miller, clutching the empty bottles. As I tossed them into the bin labeled "commingled containers," I didn't hear the normal sound of glass breaking upon impact. Now, I'll be the first to admit my thinking may have been a bit fuzzy at this time, but I thought I'd investigate (who hasn't tried to delay additional cramming?).

What I found was no big surprise, having lived in the dorms for two years. Not only was there a pizza box with its attached cheese and mushrooms acting as a cushion to the bottles, but there were several tissues, a rough draft of a paper, an Easy-Mac package and a few aluminum cans. Now I was facing a mini-dilemma at 2:00 a.m.: should I remove the pizza box and its fellow intruders from the recycling bin, thereby risking getting old cheese all over me for the sake of recycling? Or, should I just leave them, and let someone else deal with it?

I confess _ I did leave them there... I was too tired and stressed to care, and I thought, "Why bother? If someone put a pizza box in the bin for cans, then it doesn't matter what goes in after that. It will just serve as trash."

I trudged back to my room, with my books for a few hours of sleep. But, when I woke up, I saw something that made me regret my inaction from the night before. A worker from OneSource (the company employing the dorm custodians) was emptying out the bins; I watched as he took the pizza box and papers out of the containers' bin, and put them in the trash. Considering OneSource is not responsible for sorting the recyclables, it must have been a personal ideal that compelled this worker to remove the trash in order to recycle the glass containers and the aluminum cans.

Two years later, Tufts has finally figured out how to deal with those college students who, once capable of mastering the SAT, apparently have lost their ability to comprehend signs and follow simple instructions. There are now lids on the bins for recycled paper and containers, which remind me of those plastic play blocks we used when we were toddlers: a long narrow slit is for papers, and two circles are for containers. I've finally come to realize that in my third year at college, I still love to stare at shiny objects, and throw cans in little circles.

These new lids, provided by Tufts Recycles, are located all over the campus, in dorms and academic buildings. Hopefully, students will figure out where papers go, and where containers go, as it is nearly impossible to fit a soda can through the paper slot. Some students, however, still manage to avoid recycling as I did see someone lift the lid to throw away a huge shopping bag (despite the signs specifying where to throw away which objects), which brings me to another point.

One of the reasons so many recycling bins were contaminated with trash was because there were not enough trash bins around. Previously, the media center in the library contained only a recycling paper bin, resulting in soda cans, glass bottles, and trash being mixed together, defeating its original purpose.

Now, however, there are approximately two trash bins for every two recycling bins, in addition to the trash disposals outside. Hopefully, this will ease the situation, but, as college students are extremely wasteful, not even having the trash emptied every day will remedy the problem of overflowing bins.

Now, I'm not saying that these new recycling lids are a panacea for saving the world; they are, however, a great start for trying to make students more aware of what they waste. Considering that North America generates more waste per person than any other country in the world, we, as a student body, should try to limit ourselves to less material consumption.

Just as Tufts made a pact to uphold to Kyoto Protocol (which asked the US for a seven percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions below 1990 levels by 2012), we should advocate, also, the generation of less solid waste, which will ultimately help the environment on a local, national, and international scale.

Just imagine what is required in the "life" of a Coke can: it takes energy, water, and raw natural resources to mine, transport, manufacture, use, and recycle or dispose of it. Most of these energy sources have a huge negative impact, with such consequences as acid rain, photochemical smog, and global warming caused by the combustion of fossil fuels used for transporting a lot of materials.

The solution to this problem sounds simple enough, and we've heard it often enough since we were in kindergarten: reduce, reuse, recycle. And, if Tufts wants to make it easier for us to do by beckoning to our inner child with bright lids and slots, so be it.

Erin Greenfield is a junior majoring in Environmental Studies and Art History.