Reduce, Reuse, Reimage. Or, Turning Garbage into Art and Barren Spaces into Displays.

When I arrived at Zion Bible College in August, I realized very quickly that Christians hate the environment. This realization was completely counter-intuitive for me. I have never personally hated the environment, and I would say that generally speaking, the people around me haven't either. Gordon College has a group called Advocates for a Sustainable Future, which is a part of a Christian environmentalist initiative, and makes great use of the slogan "If you love the creator, take care of His creation". That makes sense to me.

I was shocked when I arrived at Zion Bible College by the lack of, well.....anything environmentally friendly. There are literally NO recycling bins on the whole campus, they use Styrofoam at pretty much every chance they get, and there is no use of (or even desire to use) internet resources to promote paperless-ness. In fact, within the first week a boy at my lunch table who I otherwise consider to be a very kind person exclaimed with great enthusiasm, "I HATE THE ENVIRONMENT!" with complete sincerity. I was horrified. 

Another thing about tiny Bible Colleges is that they tend to lack resources such as bookstores. Although I know that bookstore prices are outrageous, when I had a store on campus that sold every single one of my textbooks, I didn't bother with ordering from online. At Zion, we have few other options. With everyone ordering their books, myself included, there was an overflow of cardboard boxes all stacked up in the mailroom to be thrown out. 

Because there were so many boxes that were soon to become landfill, I was inspired with my first act of originality; I painted several boxes with pretty pictures and designs and stacked them beneath my bed. I will admit that the designs on the boxes were not originals-- I am terrible at coming up with simple graphic designs all on my own-- but I did paint them all! That deserves a bit of credit, right? And I had the idea to put them on boxes under my bed. 

These boxes did a great job of hiding the eyesore cavern that a dorm bed reveals when placed parallel to the door, and also allowed me to keep duffel bags and things shoved back there without looking messy. All in all, quite the rewarding venture.