Being good to the environment can often seem like a burdensome task with no finish line in sight. That said, it’s good to remember that being green can actually be easier done than said.

We’re past a point — flat earthers be damned — where climate change should be an issue of debate. Discounting employees, faculty and staff, the student population at the University of Saskatchewan for the 2014-15 academic year was over 23,000. Couple that figure with Saskatoon’s estimated population of 250,000 and our capacity for impacting change is abundantly clear.

Luckily, when it comes to being eco-friendly, we have a number of easy and even convenient opportunities to do our part on and off campus.

There are, of course, the obvious ones. By carrying a travel mug with you, you can cut down exponentially on wasted paper and plastic while also saving money and likely keeping your beverages warm longer.

While this is a well-known way to cut back on waste, consider carrying your own cutlery for when you buy food on campus. While this admittedly seems like an inconvenience at first, it’s an amazing trade off when it comes to how much plastic you could save, depending on how often you eat at restaurants on campus.

Alternative to bringing your own cutlery for when you buy food on campus,  we would do well to eat fewer fast food meals anyways. While paper of almost all sorts is recyclable, it can’t be repurposed if it’s been contaminated with oil or grease from foods.

As such, paper and cardboard fast food packaging and the napkins they come with are more often than not unrecyclable. Bringing food from home in reusable containers — apart from being less wasteful — is also likely to be cheaper and healthier.

Being green in the classroom is also easier than one might think. With every new academic year, loads of new school supplies are purchased, meaning more and more are destined to end up in the landfills. Conveniently though, most of our school supplies are reusable and recyclable, such as pens, highlighters and paper — even with staples in it.

Before we recycle them, we can also go the extra distance to get our use out of these supplies. Consider buying refills for your pens or highlighters when they run out of ink, rather than simply throwing them away and buying new ones.

Likewise, if properly cared for, mechanical pencils save wood, are able to repeatedly be refilled and reused and — let’s get real here — are superior in nearly every way to traditional ones. However, if you can’t be swayed to the dark side of using plastic pencils, keep in mind that wooden pencil shavings are compostable.

When it comes to taking notes, if you prefer to write them by hand as opposed to digitally, make sure you’re buying recycled paper and most importantly, make sure to recycle it again when you’re done with it. This applies to all the paper you use on campus, including — ahem — newspapers.

Lastly, on a more social note, consider how you can be eco-conscious when you go out for the night. Draft beer offers the best value as the kegs and glasses can be washed and reused, but if draft isn’t for you — or if you can’t fit a keg in your dorm — consider buying bottled beer over canned. Glass bottles are recycled nationally at a rate of 97 per cent, compared to 80 per cent for aluminum cans.

Above all — be it beer, food, school supplies or otherwise — buy local whenever you can. Minimizing the distance between where something’s made and where it ends up really does make a difference.

Being green can seem like a daunting task, but doing your part here and there is quite often of minimal inconvenience and in some cases, it may even be easier. So next time you’ve had too much draft beer, take solace in knowing you’re doing your share to help out the planet.