MODESTO – Tanner Carroll recycles. 

He doesn’t litter. He makes sure that the places he spends his money leave a low carbon footprint and has become more aware of the world that he hopes to leave for his children one day – something that the Modesto Junior College student said he had never ever considered until learning about the devastating impact that man is having on its own environment. 

And while he doesn’t consider himself to be an eco-warrior, Carroll is becoming much more conscious about his decisions about the small changes that he can make. 

“I used to drink bottled water at home until I saw how many cases of it we went through in my house. Now we have a filter and we use refillable bottles and it’s amazing how many of those water bottles we aren’t throwing away,” Carroll said. “Is that going to save the earth? No. But it’s doing something instead of just sitting there and talking about it and I think that if more people did that then we’d be a lot better off than we are right now.”

Carroll’s ideas aren’t radical and come next week when Earth Day celebrations start taking place on college campuses across the nation platforms like the one he espouses will become boilerplate – an extension of a movement that has become standard practice in most American cities. 

McKenna Armsdale said that she still has to catch herself in order to recycle – aided by public cans that are already separated by colors or designated receptacles. But what was once something that was never done is now starting to become a habit, and the realization that things on the planet aren’t going to change without human intervention, she said, is the first step. 

“Some people say that it’s global warming that is causing everything and others say that it’s a natural cycle but I think the intent behind Earth Day is just to stop and realize that things need to change,” Armsdale said. “You see the recycle logo on the cups that you get at the drive-thru and at Starbucks and it’s still not enough – not for me – to be the first response when I go to throw it away. 

“The environment is something that we all need to learn more about and understand more and that’s what I appreciate about Earth Day and even the whole week is the focus that it places on that. It’s important.”