Milwaukee is a city rich with culture and thriving people. Everywhere you turn there is something new to see. The different types of street art depicted on buildings, the beach warm and cozy from baking in the sun, the buildings looming mighty overhead some mighty in their Grecian dressing others sleek and modern. All different but all things that make up what this city is. As young professional collegiates and as members of this community we have a unique opportunity that some don’t have: power. We have the power to shape the things around us and create change.
In this article I want to address two concerning topics that have caught my attention since moving here. The two problems that have come to my attention is litter throughout the city and the lack of recycling bins that we have around our campus. I know that these issues seem small and petty, but in reality they have a huge impact on our community and a global impact as well.
Before you write this article off as a bunch of hippie mumbo jumbo, bear with me. Let me paint a pretty little picture for you. You are in your car cruising into the city off of Highway 43. It’s a beautul warm sunny day. Perfect to just let the windows roll down a smidge and have the breeze caress your skin. You’re still cruising down the highway when you hit that beautiful patch of road where you overlook the whole city. Everything is spread out around you: the endless stretch of buildings, roads, houses, and there off in the distance is the glassy blue lake. Everything below looks pristine and small.
But you only get to hold that view for a brief moment for the road snatches it away and leads you elsewhere. Eventually the road leads you past Leinenkugel’s factory and on the side of the road are those little grassy dividers. Well they would be grassy if it wasn’t for the sprinkling mounds of plastic bags that blot out the grass. This garbage that blots out that beautiful image of the pristine city sprawling before you. Instead this image is replaced with a closer look of what’s truly there.
As a young professional business woman I know how much image has an impact on the things around you. Businesses are snuffed out because their images have been tarnished. Cities work the same way. No one wants to go to a dirty dingy city where plastic bags float through the wind like tumbleweeds. The city loses tourists, business, and residents as a result of people being turned off by the city.
Luckily there is a solution to this problem and it starts with the people who live in the community. Being on campus has shown me that people want to do good. They want to volunteer themselves for the greater good and improve the community around them. Using that volunteer source and the drive to do something good is a perfect way to have people go through the community and literally clean it up. It not only makes our city cleaner but it protects the environment around us. Birds pick up the plastic bags and use them as nesting material which they can choke on and die from. Garbage that floats into the Lake or into our wells will eventually wind up into our drinking water, and who wants to drink garbage? I know I don’t!
Another solution to some of these issues is as simple as implementing more recycling and garbage bins around campus. I remember one day I was leaving class and had finished downing some coffee that comes in those little glass bottles. I walked around campus trying to hunt down a recycling bin to put it in because I didn’t want to just throw it away. I looked and looked and finally lo and behold there was one recycling bin hidden away. After searching around I thought to myself, you know if I was someone else and didn’t have the motivation to go out of my way to recycle this I would have probably just thrown this away.
One small tiny little glass bottle couldn’t make that big of a difference could it? If I threw away one glass bottle a year that would amount to 365 glass bottles a year in a landfill. That doesn’t seem so horrible, right? Now let’s put that on a larger scale. At this university we have about 30,000 people enrolled. If 30,000 people threw away 1 bottle everyday for a year that would amount to 10,950,000 glass bottles in a landfill every year. If the whole city of Milwaukee with a population of 595,047 threw away 1 glass bottle a day for a year that would amount to 217,192,155 glass bottles carelessly distributed to a landfill. Every. Single. Year.
Our city is a place that we as powerful young successful individuals should be allowed to thrive in. We shouldn’t have something as simple as one glass bottle ruin our chances of opportunity and success. So will you let one tiny little glass bottle mold you? Or will you take the initiative and mold the city yourself?