Green is the New Pink

I think I’ve become an environmentalist.

Lately I find myself asking questions like, How can I persuade my mother to recycle, How can my sorority become more earth-friendly, and How practical is a commuter bike for transportation in Pittsburgh?

The realization that I’ve begun to think green came quite suddenly last week. I spent almost an entire day off researching green energy solutions in America, green commuting, green home improvements, and discovered the Amazon Green page on Amazon.com (which I definitely recommend).

Of course, my new attitude is by no means an overnight development. Early on in my sophomore year, I bought an organic cotton grocery bag I saw advertized in my favorite magazine, Shape, and I use it every week in Pittsburgh. Though Shape is a health and fitness magazine, over time it has become a great source for information on eco-friendly products, and every year they devote an entire issue to green living. So of course, the magazine has had an influence on me.

And even before then, I was no stranger to the environment. In high school, I was the vice president of Grable’s Grasshoppers, my school’s environmental community service club. It was my favorite extracurricular, in spite of the heat, blisters, and proximity to garbage. It felt good to do something with my spare time that had a positive impact on my city.

But in college, I became so busy with school work and my sorority, I forgot about my passion for eco-service. But about a week ago, I realized that over the last few months, my concern for living green has returned, and I believe that this is due in large part to living in Japan.

In my neck of Texas, very few people recycle. We should, but no one does and since there are no city campaigns showing people how easy it is, no one bothers. Even my sorority house at CMU doesn’t have a recycling bin inside, though I think we did before I moved in. And as far as I know, no sisters have really tried to reinstate it.

In Japan, recycling is mandatory. There are no “anything goes” garbage cans. In fact, garbage receptacles of any kind are few and far between; I have never seen a public trashcan or recycling station here. You have to be in a restaurant/café or in a train station. And instead of giant black trashcans, there are three-to-five receptacle recycling centers, with separate bins for plastic bottles, cans, combustibles and noncombustibles, and sometimes for mixed paper.

For your home, each of these categories has its own day for trash pickup, and if you don’t put out the right refuse on the right day, you can get fined. You can also get in trouble with the managers of your apartment building, if you live in one.

When I first learned that we had to separate our trash, I was not happy. Digging through my trashcan and trying to figure what all is combustible and what isn’t is not my idea of a good time. But eventually, the managers simplified our system to separating out cans, bottles, and cardboard from everything else, so it wasn’t much trouble at all. Now I’m totally used to it; it’s a habit, and a good one to have.

In America, recycling centers are even less picky than that- all your recyclable materials can go into one bag and your mixed trash into another. It makes you wonder why more Americans don’t recycle. Let’s face it: we’re just lazy. It’s the cause of many of our problems, but it doesn’t have to be.

Another green practice that is popular in Japan, as well as many parts of Europe, is cycling. In Japan, having a car is an important status symbol and many families own them, but they’re not very practical for everyday use. Tokyo commute traffic is terrible, which is why a great many car owners opt to take the train (which is also painfully crowded), but many others bike to work, if they don’t live too far. But more commonly, people ride their bikes to do grocery shopping and other errands in their section of Tokyo. Almost everywhere I go, somewhere in view is an extensive line of commuter bicycles standing in an orderly line with baskets and child seats attached.

Of course, commuting by bike is becoming an increasingly popular practice in certain metropolitan areas of the US, not only because it’s eco-conscious, but because it’s waaaay cheaper and less stressful than being stuck in bumper to bumper traffic. But we’ve still got a long way to go before it can be called “common” in the States.

Simple changes like recycling and biking to work are easy ways that Americans can help combat our environmental crisis, save money, and live healthier lives. I’m not saying compulsory recycling is just around the corner (though with the current administration’s groundbreaking environmental policies, it’s not an impossibility), but maybe we should take a look at Japan’s greener lifestyle and copy an idea or two. As the Land of the Rising Sun demonstrates, urban living doesn’t have to mean living in opposition to the environment. A few tweaks here and there, and America will be on track toward a greener future.

So whether you buy a reusable grocery bag, start tossing your water bottles into a recycling bin, or dust off your bicycle, make one small change this week and take the first step towards a green lifestyle and a greener planet.