One of my first nights at Queen Mary, I collected the beer cans covering my desk, put them into the empty plastic shopping bags I had saved from my trip to the grocery store, and carried them to the communal kitchen, where I presumed I would find the recycling bin. Alas, there was none – because they don't recycle in the UK.

Ok, not technically true, but they hardly recycle, and they don't make it easy. My flatmate told me that there was a recycling dumpster somewhere on campus, behind some building, so I for the time being left my bags of cans on the kitchen counter, from which they disappeared after a few days, satisfactorily absolving me of environmental sin.

Europe is caricatured by both ends of the political spectrum almost as a 'bluer' continent, what with their public healthcare and their failure to demonize the poor. After all, their green parties actually elect representatives (although, to be fair, this is more a consequence of having proportional parliamentary representation instead of the American winner-take-all system – but still). Such is my surprise that nobody I've met gives half a shit about recycling – or, really, they all give precisely a half-shit, most of them expressing a sort of “oh, I suppose I ought to, but I don't” sort of attitude, as though it were, say, flossing.

This discovery forced me to consider how much the Pacific Northwest has rubbed off on me in my time at college. Growing up in Illinois, my household had always recycled, and it was easy to find bins for plastic and glass at my schools. When I moved to Washington, I was a bit taken aback by the zealotry of environmentalists. Recycling was not nearly enough – what about composting? What about water conservation? What about unplugging your charger from the wall every single time you unplug your phone or computer? I admit, I became a bit of a reactionary. Someone would scold me for not removing the obviously recyclable sleeve from the obviously not-recylcable-but-in-fact-compostable coffee cup I had casually tossed into the trash, and I would respond with a question about their estimate of how many recyclable coffee-cup-sleeves worth of jet fuel get burned by the military C-17s that fly over campus every day. I'd purposely replace compact-fluorescent bulbs with incandescent ones, although honestly, I did this mostly because the light is so much more pleasing.

The Californians and Oregonians were quick assume that it was the Midwesterner in me that couldn't resist trashing the planet, that because I was not from the Progressive Coast of America Where People Are Enlightened, I was blind to the consequences of my irresponsibility. I liked to reply that, like those on the opposite extreme of the political spectrum, their propensity for moralizing sort of undermined their support among the politically moderate; that their agenda amounted to 'enviro-gelicalism'. I became a reflexive contrarian, dredging up freakonomic arguments that recycling is potentially bad for the environment because of how much energy it requires, or that global warming is probably a good thing, in the long run. But what is one to do when surrounded by puritanical vegan types who give serious consideration to the argument that not having children is an environmentally-praiseworthy choice (because we're preserving the environment for whom, exactly?)

And yet, here I find myself, segregating my paper waste and beer cans and fretting about the volume of water the toilet flushes, like some sort of simpering idealist.  My time here so far has thrown into sharp relief the exceptional (though exceptionally self-righteous) environmental consciousness of Northwesterners. And as long as we're simpering... It's helped me learn something about myself too!