As of a month ago, students at CHS might have noticed two large, white cans sitting by the student parking entrance to the school. These are not for compost or storage, but for recycling aluminum. They have been set up by CHS’s, building monitor, Timothy Henson, in connection with the Lake of Egypt Property Owners, or LEAPO.
Recycling aluminum can help the environment by reducing the amount of trash in landfills, allowing for more materials to be reused. Along with this, LEAPO is using the aluminum recycling program to raise money for the Lake of Egypt Fireworks. “This year, because of partners sure as CHS, Pine Lakes Golf Course, Max Marina, Pyramid Arces…we have over a one hundred barrels out at different locations, and they’ve already surpassed last year’s goal,” Henson said.
Along with raising money, LEAPO’s recycling program is raising awareness. “We’re teaching people to recycle, and also [we’re doing this] to hopefully get publicity out, [to] tell everybody…we got the cans out there. We got signage. So please, when you’re done with your energy drink or aluminum can, soda, whatever, please deposit it in one of those two cans,” Henson said.
Despite Henson’s efforts, not many students have been recycling their cans. “I think that we’re early on and so we need to do more education because I’m out there every morning and I see the amount of cans that pass me going into the school, but I don’t see a whole lot of cans coming back out from the school. So maybe it’s a matter of, hey, where’s a better location that we could put one of those cans, maybe the cafeteria?” Henson said.
Certainly, moving one or both cans to the cafeteria could increase the amount of aluminum being recycled, but the only real way to make a change is to educate more people. In this case, this means spreading the word about the new recycling program. The more students who know, the better CHS will do.
Henson is not the only person in CHS who is trying to make the school more environmentally friendly. Currently, the new Eco-Club is working towards their goal of starting a small-scale paper recycling project. To accomplish this, they plan on using the blue recycling bins that are already present in most teacher’s classrooms and emptying them out once a week to take them to recycling centers. The Science Club has tried this before, but they unfortunately could not sustain the efforts as local recycling plants closed. “Once our paper recycling initiative is fully verified, communicated, and approved, Eco-Club will begin regularly collecting paper from the recycling bins in teachers’ classrooms across the building,” Eco-Club founder and CHS sophomore Keller Beyers said.
As CHS continues into the school year with a renewed goal to be green, students should be urged to participate in recycling and spreading awareness of the cause. By doing this, they can recruit more people to help. In order to continue moving forward, everyone will need to make some adaptations to evolve with the world. As long as everyone persists and stays educated, CHS will not only outlast any changes, it will thrive with them.
