Just about everyone at NIU anticipates the arrival of spring with great enthusiasm. No more heavy coats, no more long underwear, no more hats, gloves or scarves. Walking to class becomes enjoyable, especially for us guys who like to gaze at shapely bodies draped in spring clothes.

But I’ve been distracted lately and it hasn’t been because of any scantily clad eye candy. I’ve been disgusted by all of the litter polluting the campus.

Styrofoam, plastic bottles, McDonald’s wrappers and cigarette boxes deface our habitat and degrade our environment. It’s not like there is no opportunity to dispose of this waste properly. Garbage and recycling containers are outside practically every classroom on campus. We must be more responsible.

I don’t understand what is so difficult about throwing trash in a trash bin and recyclables in their proper container. It seems to be a very simple concept, yet some of us cannot comprehend the efficiency of this system.

Perhaps some alarming facts will make you reconsider where your trash goes. According to SKS Bottle & Packaging, Inc., if you throw your plastic soda bottle on the ground today and come back 700 years from now, you will find it looks almost exactly same! But if you recycle your plastic soda bottle, you will help make a variety of products such as Rubbermaid, Rollerblades, car bumpers and other common products.

Recycling one ton of paper saves the equivalent of 17 trees, according to the Illinois Recycling Association. It saves enough energy to power an average home for six months. It saves 7,000 gallons of water and keeps 60 pounds of pollutants out of the air. Americans throw away enough paper each year to build a wall 12 feet high stretching from New York City to Los Angeles. Think of how much energy and natural resources we could be saving when, according to the NIU recycling program, we recycle only 22 percent of all the paper used in America in a year. There is vast room for improvement.

Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a television for three hours. It results in 95 percent less air pollution and 97 percent less water pollution than producing aluminum from natural resources. Think of all the beer cans thrown away in a party’s aftermath. If we recycled these beer cans, then you might say partying helps the environment. See, recycling can be fun. Recycling aluminum saves 95 percent of the energy it would take to mine the raw materials needed to manufacturer aluminum, according to the NIU Recycling Program.

Glass can be recycled over and over again; it never wears out. Recycling one glass bottle saves enough energy to light a 100-watt light bulb for four hours.

Recycling saves enough energy each year to provide heat and light for 400,000 Illinois homes, according to the Illinois Recycling Association. According to the Environmental Protection Agency in 1999, recycling and compost activities prevented about 64 million tons of material from ending up in landfills and incinerators. Today, this country recycles 28 percent of its waste, a rate that has almost doubled during the past 15 years. But there is always room for improvement.

Recycling is the easiest thing we can do to improve our environment. It saves energy and natural resources, diminishes pollution and reduces our growing landfills. And next time you walk to class, try counting the pieces of litter on your way. Then think, shouldn’t every day be Earth Day?