Everything But The Weed

Approved by:
Linda Maze, a Wedding photography Gainesville FL in Gainesville Florida

This year I lived with a couple college roommates who are gigantic fans of the game of beer pong. Which is Great with me since I am a long time fan of the game myself. Our collective passion for the game has caused us to often go through hundreds and hundreds of beer cans per week, in what adds up to at least 2-3 tournaments. Beer Pong is a “drinking game” where the object is to throw a ping-pong ball from one side of a ping-pong table into one of the cups filled with beer on the other side of the table. When your opponent drains a ball into a cup on your side of the table, you have to drink the beer in that cup and remove the cup from the table. The team who makes a ball in all of their opponent’s cups first is the winner. This great game is fun and challenging, and you also go through so much beer.

Probably due to the hassle and the upfront money necessary for kegs, most people who play beer pong get beer by the cans, typically in packs of 30. This game requires a lot of beer drinking and it wasn’t until recently that I really considered how many aluminum can were being wasted. It’s something so obvious, but it’s also something easy to over look when having “fun” with friends in college. I’ve always recycled cans, or “tried” to, but I have to say I’ve been pretty guilty of not taking advantage of every opportunity to do so.

And so, it was refreshing and inspiring when I first saw my roommate’s Chris and John working so diligently on a daily and weekly basis to make sure that every single can used at our house is recycled. How many people do you know that go through hundreds of aluminum cans per week and recycle all of them? Even more, how many people do you know that will consistently recycle on other people’s behalf, even when they are not necessarily the ones consuming the most? But recycling at this volume and rate is not necessarily easy or convenient. As time goes on, a massive pile of cans can accumulate quickly. Can crunching “sessions” can be pretty fun, especially if you round up some volunteers and put on some good tunes. But my new roommates don’t stop there, they look to recycle everything in the house, they buy only rechargeable batteries, all paper is recycled, glass and plastic bottles too, and really just about everything that they can figure a way to recycle, is recycled. Our community doesn’t really offer anything that makes it convenient or easy to recycle, but yet Chris and John make it a constant priority to “figure out a way”, regardless of circumstances.

When people like Chris and John lead by example in their efforts to be Eco Friendly, it creates the possibility for a domino effect on the people around them, who observe their efforts and are inspired. In reality, it takes genuine efforts to be Eco-Friendly. This is definitely not a spectator sport (even though beer pong is); you won’t make a difference if you merely “support” the green movement, it is not a spectator sport, you must take action. One example is the issue of the recycling center, where it is located, and how to get whatever you are recycling to it. And are we going to turn around and drive a fuel-inefficient vehicle there? There’s also the container we use to transport whatever we are recycling to think about. If plastic bags or grocery bags are used in the process, we need to make sure we recycle these as well or else we might be negating our eco friendly progress. Fuel-efficient cars and trucks, along with recycled grocery bags and stainless steel water bottles are a few solutions that greatly improve our opportunity to really make a positive overall impact.

The green movement can only be sustained by the consistent action of real people. Like all outstanding human accomplishments, on an individual or group level, it is the leaders (like Chris and John) who have the courage to actually take consistent action who motivate others to make positive changes in their lives and in the world. And we’re speaking of Beer Pong, which definitely has become a world-wide trend among the youth of the world, as is beer drinking in general. If recycling is the “cool” thing to do among the youth, everyone, including the older and very young future generations will take notice. It is absolutely amazing to think about the amount of cans that we can save from being put into a landfill through recycling the cans used in beer pong!