At home, things are quite simple: clearly labelled bins for various types of recycling, a reassuring food waste bin at hand in the kitchen, another bag for the various plastics that can’t be recycled from the house. With ample time to spare, it’s easy enough to go through the motions of checking the various labels on packages, washing and cleaning dutifully, and ensuring everything ends up where it should. Seeing the nicely-sorted plastics solemnly awaiting collection gives a certain peace of mind; the reassuring thought that one is doing one’s little bit in making the world a better place.
Not so in Oxford. Here everything goes out of the window (almost literally). Yet there are a few reasons – or maybe ‘self-justifications’ would be a more fitting term to use. First is the waste systems of my own college feeling as if they haven’t changed since the 20s: one recycling bin in the kitchen, another big black bin for everything else. Despite ongoing JCR efforts, the concept of a food bin is just as alien to St Hugh’s as the notion of a short walk. The cooking of every meal then ends with a period of moral pain – a momentary resistance followed by inevitable resignation to the inevitability of dumping the ends of peppers and carrots into the same container as its non-recyclable packaging.
And it’s not just the food. A good deal of plastics need to be taken to a larger facility for processing. But this transportation, simple enough when orchestrated by my parents, becomes mentally an insuperable task. It’s not even that there’s not enough time in between two essays, German classes, and various extra-curriculars, though of course that’s a part of it. It’s more than that the mental effort required after a full day of work means that temptation to just do the easy thing is practically irresistible. Add to that the (not insignificant) probability of a scout, through absolutely no fault of their own, mistaking the collected plastic for just another thing to be put in the bin.
There’s also the added dimension of the various social problems that invariably arise in shared kitchens. Mine, for instance, shared between enough people to mean the amount of free space is limited, makes carving out a good system for self-organising recycling a challenge. Further, with everyone else equally busy, there’s little social pressure to be environmentally disciplined – repeatedly seeing things dumped in a single bin reduces the sense of its wrongness.
Bins are not the end of the environmental woes, though. Living on a frugal student budget moves consumer choices away from any considerations other than what is the cheapest. The homely delights of Ecover, plastic-free laundry detergent, and sustainable toiletries are replaced with whatever unfathomable compounds go into Tesco’s budget options.
None of these are intended as excuses, of course. Writing them out makes even more explicit the weakness of the ‘reasons’, the laziness of the responses. So hopefully there’s ways to move forwards. Fighting college bureaucracy on dragging things into the 21st century is an arduous but necessary struggle. Starting term with effective and simple systems for organising waste disposal should persist throughout, if well-maintained. Foregoing another drink to spend that bit more on sustainable products is a worthy sacrifice.
Lastly, the proper attitude for thinking about these issues is complex. Refusing responsibility for things which you can straightforwardly take care of is not acceptable. Pretending it’s not an issue, or that you can’t make things better, are damaging fictions. But equally, living up to conscientious ideals is not always easy, and constant dejection can quickly lead to nihilism. Better to try to do as much as possible, with an acceptance that it won’t be perfect.
And of course, all of these issues can be seen as complete trivialities when put in the perspective of the global factors that drive climate change. Making consumption more sustainable is so far from being the be-all-and-end-all of climate action as to be almost absurd. Cutting down a single flight would likely do much more than a full three years of responsible behaviour. Reshaping socio-economic structures even more so. But disregarding your own behaviour allows apathy to creep in everywhere. Fixing the immediate problems is a start. Where we go next is another question.
