As a college student that has just begun volunteering actively in environmental work in the community I started to wonder what my place of employment could do in order to go green. I have been to multiple seminars where businesses are all about saving the Earth. This, to me, shows that America is working towards a goal of a sustainable, green future one step at a time. This should be happening in all jobs, big and small. In honor of America Recycles Day, which is November 15, 2010, I decided to write a proposal for my place of employment to encourage recycling.

Even if what you are contributing is just recycling of paper, it’s a small step in the right direction. It gives the company you are with bragging rights to say that they are doing what they can to go green. In my proposal, I told my company that they should go ahead and start a recycling program so that they can be a leader in the area of business they are included. Maybe in time your business will take going green further and, for example, start installing energy saving light bulbs.

Some helpful facts that might help to sway your company’s decision:

The energy we save when we recycle one glass bottle is enough to light a light bulb for four hours.
Every ton of paper that is recycled saves 17 trees.
Recycling prevents habitat destruction, loss of biodiversity, and soil erosion associated with logging and mining. This will help future generations to have an environment that has resources for their use like what this current generation has.
It is important to reduce our reliance on foreign oil. Recycling helps us do that by saving energy.

It can help to save money if the company pays for waste management to pick up the garbage every day like my place of employment because there is so much to recycle that it will greatly decrease the amount of trash.
If you think your company cant recycling anything, please check out 50 things you can recycle! That you might not know about.

Every bit of recycling makes a difference. For example, one year of recycling on just one college campus, Stanford University, saved the equivalent of 33,913 trees and the need for 636 tons of iron ore, coal, and limestone. I hope that you can get the courage to promote recycling or any other kind of green action at your place of employment to get the ball rolling.

This article appears in Nov 4-10, 2010.