6 THE VOICE, THURSDAY, MARCH 12, 2015 EDITOR SANDY POWLIK lewpoints Convenient coffee costs the planet f you have a Keurig at home, it’s time [: pack it away and never use it again. In recent years, K-Cup coffee machines have become a staple in a lot of North American homes. Almost 40 per cent Canadian households have a K-Cup brewer and use K-Cups. People love K-Cups because they serve quick and convenient coffee, but not everyone is aware of the harm that the K-Cups cause to the environment. After using a K-Cup, do people recycle the coffee pod? If they do, do they recycle the pods in the right way? What’s more, a used K-Cup coffee pod consists of four parts: coffee grounds, an aluminum cover, a piece of filter paper and the plastic body. How many people really separate the parts and recycle them with care and patience? Keurig Green Mountain, Inc. says on its website that its current K-Cup packs are not recyclable, but it promises to produce 100 per cent recyclable packs by 2020. However, John Sylvan, inventor of K-Cups said in a CBC interview, “I don’t care what Green Mountain says. You can’t recycle that package.” True, it only takes one to two minutes to make a cup of Keurig coffee. However, people should decide which one is more important — saving time or saving the planet. OPINION XIA0 XU In case people need another r4 4 reason to say no to Keurig, K-Cup coffee is expensive. May be A 16-pack of what Starbucks K-Cups people re- costs $15.77 at Walmart, while a ally need bag of Starbucks to dois get ground coffee, which makes on up a f ew average 30 cups, minutes costs $11.97. earlier Furthermore, K-Cups are very small. People who like really strong coffee or a lot of it, will need more than one pod. So, these coffee lovers have to spend even more. The price quickly adds up to almost $2 acup. Why not just buy the coffee directly from a coffee shop? Tim Hortons sells a medium-sized coffee for about $1.70, and it’s just as fast, if not faster. Maybe what people really need to do is get up a few minutes earlier to start the coffee maker. Those few sacrificed minutes can help make a huge difference to our environment. We want to hear from you Got a different point of view? Write to us. Problems with something we've said? Let us know. Think we got a fact wrong? Tell us. Journalism instructor Erica Bulman oversees The Voice. Email her at ebulman@langara.be.ca Big Kidstuff these days hen I was 18, I was kind of a W:: deal. At least, I got my share of accolades for my consistently high GPA, music solos and awards, coaching and tutoring and just being a pretty decent kid. But my goodness, if young people aren’t out saving the world and standing up to big evil companies who want to rape and pillage Mother Earth today! Environmentally active youth in Canada are busy today - more pipelines than half-pipes, more tar sands than sand boxes, more coal trains than Coltrane. I am positively impressed. What brought this to my attention is Luke Wallace. As part of Langara’s environmental studies spring seminar series, the college showed a documen- tary by Wallace, 21, this week. Wallace, a Langara alumnus and folk musician, made a film last July detailing how B.C.’s communities and coastline would be impacted by the Northern Gateway Project. He not only made a documentary, One Big Coast, that packs a pressing environmental punch, but he also recorded the film’s soundtrack, The Kitimat LP. How the heck does a 21-year-old know how to make a documentary? And one that has to be heavily informed on such serious and wide-reaching matters? I decided to look for more shining stars and didn’t get out of Vancouver before coming across Sam Harrison. Harrison is the freckled, 18-year-old director of the non-profit group, Kids for Climate Action. At 16, the natural leader made such an impact with his speech to the Joint Panel Review opposing the pipeline, he instantly became a social media hero. He has marched in protest against Port Metro Vancouver's coal exports and is outspokenly charging forward against the fossil fuel industry. Such political participation and he can’t yet vote. Reading about Harrison led me straight to Kelsey Mech. A recent University of Victoria graduate, Mech already has a jaw-dropping résumé. The current national director of the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition also organized and launched UVic’s fossil fuel divestment campaign, was a core organizer for PowerShift BC and last year took her skills international with the Canadian Youth Delegation. And shifting from southern B.C., I must point out the 15-year-old supernova, Rachel Parent. The Ontario native has single-handedly taken on Monsanto and become an international voice against GMOs. In 2014 alone, and these are just a few of the events, the . >, food safety activist = and Kids RightTo QPINIQ Know founder was SANDY POWLIK a keynote speaker at the 52-country- and 400-citywide March Against Monsanto, did a volunteer mission to Kenya and attended the Gandhi, Globalization and Earth Democracy Conference in New Delhi, India. These emerging environmental leaders make me proud to be Cana- dian and on first glance, anyone will find there are so many out-of-this- world rising superstars. Youth are rockin’ it! ANNA DIMOFF and MICHAEL LYLYK comic Binge-watcher comes back to reality too many a bleary-eyed, TV marathon morning-after: The art of binge-watching requires careful scheduling and a healthy dose of self-discipline. But just like any guilty pleasure, binge-watching can still be enjoyed responsibly. When sites like Netflix take you seamlessly from one episode to the next without so much as a click of a button, it can be tough to muster the will to exit out of your browser when you're struck with Frank Underwood’s imposing glare on House of Cards. As you spend hour upon hour viewing the latest season of Orange is the New Black, your bedroom may insidiously morph into Litchfield Penitentiary. Okay, so maybe I’m exaggerating for the sake of effect, but what I’m trying H::: what I’ve learned from far to say is obsessive streaming can bleed into your real life in pervasive ways. This is why it’s important to structure stream- ing around your life -not the other way around. My binge-watch- ing journey began in 2007 before the widespread popularity of Netflix and the advent of video-on-demand cable services such as Shomi and CraveTV. Most of my streaming was done via foreign websites with horribly pixelated quality. The struggle to follow series that OPINION TANYA COMMISSO didn’t air on television resulted in one particular winter break spent almost entirely in front of the family desktop. Back in eighth grade, the worst things I could be avoiding were friends and family — but this was before the demands of work and post-secondary. This summer, when Orange is the New Black’s second season was released for streaming, I knew I couldn’t just drop the ball on real life in favour of holing up in a fictional nar- rative, regardless of how compelling it may be. Instead, I structured my streaming around my busy work schedule and social life. I may not have had the bragging rights to say I’d gotten through the season in a single night, but I did have something much more valuable to claim - a life outside of fiction. The Voice is published by Langara College's journalism department. Editorial opinions are those of the staff and are independent of views of the student government and administration. We welcome letters to the editor. All letters must be signed. They may be edited for brevity. Names may be withheld in special cases, but your letter must include your name and phone number. HOW TO REACH US PHONE 604-323-5396 FAX 604-323-5398 E-MAIL thevoice@langara.be.ca DROP-IN Room A226 Langara College There is a mailbox at the entrance to the journalism rooms. SNAIL MAIL The Voice 100 West 49th Ave. Vancouver, B.C. VSY 226 WEBSITE wwwilangaravoice.ca EDITORIAL STAFF THIS ISSUE: MANAGING EDITOR/ PAGE 6 Sandy Powlik PAGE EDITORS PAGE 1 James Goldie PAGE 2 Nich Johansen PAGE 3 Kera Piwowarski-Skocylas PAGE 4 Sableen Minhas PAGE 5 Mel Edgar PAGE 7 Jes Hovanes PAGE 8 Charlotte Drewett WEB EDITORS Alice D'Eon Lena Alsayegh Natasha Chang Vivian Chui Shannon Lynch COPY EDITOR Mary Beach REPORTERS Jocelyn Aspa Mona Butler Tanya Gommisso Anna Dimoff Kelvin Gawley Dustin Godfrey Alex Hoegler Michael Lylyk Bryan Mc Govem Owen Munro Bailey Nicholson Rebecca Phair Sara Rabey Ethan Reyes James Smith Tony Su Julia Wickham Xiao Xu Contact us: Online at langaravoice.ca Twitter at @LangaraVoice