PV students may be questioning the headline above, thinking “Of course PV recycles, that’s what the recycling bins are for.” However, the recycling bins do not cover the extent of the recycling procedure for a building as large as the high school; they are just the first step of the process.
Students are told to separate recyclable products when disposing of them in their designated bins: paper products go in one bin and recyclable bottles in another bin. This way, it will be easy for them to stay separated when they go to the recycling center.
Think about how many worksheets, homework assignments, and packets you are handed in a day and how many water bottles you drink on a regular basis. Now, multiply that number by the 1431 students that attend Pleasant Valley High School. Shocking, right?
This may not seem like a big deal as it applies to one person, but when it applies to the mass of students and faculty at the high school, it definitely has a lasting impact.
While PV has taken conscious efforts to eliminate waste by providing water bottle fill stations to students and encouraging teachers to try to only make extra copies of handouts when absolutely necessary, the waste is still substantial due to the numbers.
The recycling bins all began as a fundraiser for the Children’s Therapy Network, formerly known as Easter Seals, in Illinois. The network approached all the area schools about recycling and had a truck that picked up all the recycled cans and bottles weekly. This program lasted about four years and unfortunately ended a few years ago due to a shortage of faculty,since this program was solely based on volunteer work. “The profit margin on recycling is so small that without volunteerism, they weren’t making anything off of it,” Principal Mike Zimmer said.
Since the program ended, Zimmer has had several students approach him every year, asking about the recycling process for the school. He has even had students visit local recycling centers to see how the centers work with the hopes that when they came back, they would start a recycling campaign for the school. “My hope would be if someone would take this on, they would take one bottle from a recycling bin in the cafeteria and follow it all they way from the school to the recycling center through the recycling process,” Zimmer stated.
