Recycling is cool

I remember watching "Captain Planet" during my early years in life. The show was created by Ted Turner as a way to promote environmental awareness in the youth culture. Well, it worked. Only now have I come to realize that our society is so wasteful and so many of us are devoid of any respect for our planet.\nI'm not saying I am completely innocent with my actions, but we can influence the future more than anyone could think. I could easily drive my car to work but it is almost a ten minute walk down Kirkwood. If I can save gasoline and get exercise, then what is wrong with that? If the people around me think I am silly, I can deal with it.\nBut if you can't walk everywhere, take a look at the Toyota Prius. I am fascinated with this hybrid car that uses minimal gas but is still a fully functional vehicle; Toyota knows what they are doing and I want to give them a pat on the back. Yeah, it was cool to drive a sports car in high school but it seems SUVs are getting to be something along the lines of being the "it thing." If you don't need an SUV, don't drive one simply to help your self-esteem. In reality, a Prius is way cooler than a gas guzzler like a Hummer that gets something like 10 to 11 miles per gallon.\nThe Bloomington Sanitation Department knows how to be cool. The idea that recycling is free in this city while garbage pick-up is not is simply brilliant. What a way to simply promote the concept of recycling while getting people to crunch down on their garbage. How cool is that?\nOkay, I'm not going to lie. I live in a college house with some awesome roommates but we did not seriously recycle and that had to change. We spent so much money on the yellow garbage stickers when there were so many things in our bags that could be recycled. I have been heckled for thinking we all should recycle. Since when is it uncool not to? I would encourage our city government to make it against the law to not recycle. If you have a pop can or a plastic bottle found in your garbage, you should be slapped with a fine. It's a way to raise money while ultimately conserving our resources.\nNo one will honestly think less of you for recycling, not driving an SUV or walking to work. When I am dead in two thousand years and the ozone layer around the Earth ceases to exist because we refused to do our part, there better not be a single complaint. When there is so much garbage that it fills all of Texas, there better not be a single complaint. When there are so many problems with our planet and we need to travel in space ships to the nearest habitable solar system, you guessed it -- no complaints.\nI don't want to preach about the idea but all I can hope for is that people are more aware and environmentally conservative. If we don't change our attitudes and actions, I hope the people of the future look back on our generation and think of us as horrible, horrible people.