Stances & Statements
ETHICS / ENVIRONMENT / RESPONSIBILITY - Part 2
​
​
​
Discipline
Personal discipline is the closest practice we have to control in our lives when combined with knowledge. If we are not in control with the tools of education and self-discipline, then we are basically biological automatons that are likely to create problems for other people due to our ignorance and sloppy behavior.
Lying
Lying is all too common in human behavior. People lie for a lot of different reasons: sometimes a lie is necessary for survival, or to not hurt someone's feelings, and other times a lie can be for selfish exploitative reasons. Because we encourage the virtues of honesty and integrity, we cannot encourage lying any more than is absolutely necessary.
The Environment
When we talk about the environment it often refers to our planet, our habitat, and perhaps locally where we live. This is accurate, but the environment can be thought of as everything in our physical universe. We as humans just refer to the parts of the environment that we are generally involved with. Often the environment is thought of as being separate from us, but in reality, we are part of the environment. We should respect our environment just as we should respect ourselves, as it is our home and part of us.
Reduce / Reuse / Recycle
The USF encourages everyone to do what they can within reason to reduce, reuse, and recycle. The recycling system of today is by far not a perfect system, but it is without doubt, better to use our current recycling system than not make any effort at all to recycle. It is important that consumers are educated about the materials they use and what happens at the end of life, so to speak, for a particular product/material, whether that be reused, upcycled, recycled, or put into a landfill. While recycling and other practices are helpful, we believe the best practice we can do is innovate to create new materials that are environmentally friendly and contribute as much to a zero-waste future as possible. We are also optimistic about how robotics will help to assist with properly sorting and preparing garbage and recycling as most Americans don’t know how to do so and or make the proper effort to recycle correctly.