At the end of every Tuesday, an announcement is made: “Today is paper recycling day. Please put your recycling bin outside of your classroom door.” But you may be wondering what that means and who’s in charge of the process. The answer: Go Green Club.
The club started in 2007 and is now sponsored by science teacher Chris Barnett and AP Environmental Science teacher Susan Schram. The club focuses on getting Niles West’s paper to a company called Abitibi, which picks up the paper and recycles it into newspapers.
After school on Tuesdays, the club divides into three groups for each floor. Each group takes a rolling cart, called a gondola, to navigate a route and place the paper from each bin into the gondola. If the bin is filled with anything but office paper, the bin is left alone. After the group’s floors are cleared, they head outside to the location of the school’s big paper bins, which are then extracted by the recycling plant. They finally return to Room 1410 where each member receives their service hour.
One of the main purposes of the club is to raise awareness about the environmental benefits of recycling.
“Our main prerogative is to maintain and promote recycling in our community. Educating our community members on the impacts and implications of recycling, and why that’s important. We do this by using effective promotional strategies to inform people of the process of recycling. For example, we recently changed our wording from stating that our bins were ‘paper only’ to ‘office paper only,’ because people would throw in things that aren’t recyclable,” junior and co-president of Go Green club Timothy Biel said.
Biel designed a label that reminds students and faculty of the proper procedure to contribute to paper recycling, which could be laminated and labeled next to every recycling bin. This was a promotional push to reduce the amount of trash in recycling bins, as well as the number of bins that were put out on paper recycling days.
Barnett recommends that students who are conscious of the environment and want service hours look into the Go Green club.
“This club is especially important due to the current state of the environment, so this club is aimed at students who want to do something about it. Not only do students gain service hours but they also gain some great public speaking skills since we go and give presentations to homerooms about environmental issues,” Barnett said.
Senior and co-president of Go Green Club Jacob Castro emphasizes the importance of recycling.
“I would say that doing one small thing, which is just like recycling, putting your paper in the paper recycling bin, goes a long way in helping the environment in our future,” Castro said.
