OPINION: Is Recycling the Solution or the Problem?

Recycling in Statesboro

By: Ashley Jones 



Statesboro- Recycling has always been known as the most prevalent way to recycling. At 

least to those who don’t know much about the environment and ways to improve it. I know 

because I was once one of those people but after doing my own research I found that 

recycling in my opinion doesn’t help the environment as much as we think it does. What 

actually helps to improve the world around us is reusing the the plastics, paper, and what 

some of us may call waste. I found this out after doing an in depth report on recycling. I 

decided to do an environmental story on recycling because I was always taught in my earlier 

years of life to do recycle. Like most other elementary students, recycling was the first way I 

was taught to help better our environment and like most other students after elementary 

school, I never heard anything else about the topic. I was never taught anything else about 

the topic, until I entered this class. The first assignment we had to do in Dr. Riley’s class was 

a story on something related to helping better the environment, and like most students my 

group decided to focus on recycling. So for our story we spoke to the Center of 

Sustainability program coordinator, Cami Sockow. That’s when I learned about the 

importance of reusing. How many times have you drank a bottle of water or any liquid 

substance and thrown it away without ever thinking about where that empty bottle was 

going. According to Sockow, people could help improve the environment just by using that 

bottle again as a water bottle. It’s that simple, even recycling can be more complicated than 

reusing but doesn’t help the environment as much. When I came to Georgia Southern, I 

noticed a trend of students saving the liquor bottles they bought after consuming what was 

in the bottle and keeping the bottle as trophies to help add a décor to their apartments. I 

myself hopped on liquor trophy trend when I was old enough to purchase alcohol. Many of 

didn’t even know that we were on the first step of helping the environment, now we just 

need to take the extra step and actually reuse those bottles to help finish out a good deed 

for the earth.