O.P.T 4 Green Youth Conservation board

Thank you for all the great entries we have gotten into the poster competition! In the coming weeks we will announce winners, so stay tuned. There are about 23 entries and counting. We will still accept entries until the 31st, but after that date there will be no more. Choosing a winner is going to be very difficult, but everyone who took the time to make an entry should be proud. I want to make a special thank you to all of you from Moberly Missouri who sent in your flyers, it was a wonderful suprise to see that we are reaching people in states other than Oklahoma and Utah. I would also like to post part of an email that we recieved this week:

"I am so excited that I found this information on the great things you all are doing.  Personally, I had started a recycling project at our home, and my office just this year.  I almost felt alone at first because people are not very responsive.  However, the more that I have made myself availalbe to take their things to recycle along with mine and they see my children participating as well they are slowly making a much better effort.  I am so very proud that there is such a great group of young adults in our area.  Please keep up the great work!  You have already made a HUGE difference which will make the end result such a sweet reward."

After reading this email I was able to confirm a couple of things. First off, if you have a goal in mind like getting your company to recycle, or making your home a recycling free area there are a lot of problems that you will face.

In the past recycling was not a major issue that people really thought about, but now that we see what has happend to our environment when we don't, and now that we see that certain things become cheaper if we recycle, the process is becoming more widespread. That is not to say, however, that everyone is open to it. But we can make people change their ways just by making things easier and making the service availible.

One thing that I see a lot of in schools is that students will not recycle their papers because the recycling bin is farther away from their desk than the trash bin. Recycling for them is not "convienent", but in the classes where the teachers express that all paper must be recycled there is a lot more participation in the service.

The person that I recieved the email from faced the same problem as the teachers, but by expressing her opinion, and going out of her way to make it easy to recycle she was able to get other people into the habit of recycling at work as well as at her home.

We can all make a difference in this way by consistantly letting people know of our opinions and values. Peer pressure is a powerful tool if used correctly. It may take a while to get people around to your side of things but once you do they are not likely to turn back. I want to encourage all of you to keep telling people about your stance on environmental issues so that we can change the mentality of America, as well as making environmentally healthy services more wide spread. I wish you all luck on the path to success.

-Austin Evans