My Passion for Going Green

Image by lowjumpingfrog via FlickrBy Tina L Douglas

Being an eco-friendly professor can be huge work. Of course, not only do you serve as a role model for students, you also have to inculcate the value of protecting the environment to your students through your lessons. That's when it gets pretty hard especially if you are teaching history - and that's not being funny.

I introduced my eco-friendly lifestyle at the first day of class. I informed my class that in our class, we will try to save whatever resources that we can and provided them the reason why we should do so. I did not simply lay down the facts about our environment, I also emphasized that what we will be doing will not necessarily benefit us, but the next generation. Since it was the first day, I also felt that it was fitting to introduce my "green house rules." I had to explain to my students that these rules were specially designed for our class and that they should not expect their other classes to do the same. Here were some of our eco-friendly rules:

1. All recycled papers. I informed my students that whatever requirements that they need to submit should be done in recycled papers. I was not asking my students to buy these "recycled papers" but I was actually referring to papers whose other sides are printed and the other side is not. These are still good papers. Besides, after recording and checking their assignments, these students will simply throw these off to the nearest garbage can. Let what they throw be papers who have been exhausted beyond repair or reuse.

2. Everything should be handwritten. This does not mean, of course, that I am not a big fan of computer print outs. However, for one-page assignments (or until six pages), it would be very cost-efficient to hand write these assignments than have them printed using commercial or desktop printers. Studies have shown that unless you use soybean ink, papers who have prints in them require more "processes" (and thus, energy) before they can be recycled compared to papers who have been printed with soybean ink. This also eliminates the student's practice of copying and pasting from internet articles.

3. Pencils up! In my class, everyone is required to use pencils instead of pens. Most pens are made from plastic and other non-biodegradable materials and since I encourage my students to take down a lot of notes, they will be consuming more pens that they have in their other classes. Instead of using ink, I encourage them to use pencils. Pencils are made from wood and while they cut down trees to make these, they are more eco-friendly because they are biodegradable.

4. Fax me please. I give my student's take home assignments and instead of having all these handwritten into recycled papers, I also gave them the option to submit these requirements via fax that does not use papers-online fax. I gave them a website where they can send online faxes for free, of course.

Tina L. Douglas is a professional writer. She loves to help the needy people through her articles. She gives advices, tips and techniques on certain matters like identity theft and online fax.

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