Recycling and the value of turning trash into treasure
One man's trash is another man's treasure - especially when the "trash" is turned into a completely new treasure by recycling companies.
We are Jordan Marshall and Maggie Rhoads, high school students at Benet Academy, who are working to decrease the number of items sent to landfills. To accomplish this, we are involved in different recycling projects within the Environmental Club at our school.
I am Jordan Marshall, and I am a freshman. I joined the Environmental Club to grow my knowledge of the climate crisis and to help the cause through projects sponsored by our club. To further educate myself on the topic, I joined the Envirothon team, which allowed me to understand environmental problems specifically related to forestry and the background of these issues.
I am also involved in other service projects our club sponsors, like the Terracycle project. The goal of this project is to limit the frequency at which everyday items are sent to landfills, and to do this, we collect items and send them to Terracycle, a recycling organization. While we put many smaller containers in classrooms for used school supplies, we also put larger bins around the school for other items that could be sent to Terracycle, such as chip bags and plastic utensils.
Our club also collects unwanted crayons for SCARCE to be melted down into super-crayons and reused, rather than thrown away. My biggest concern with the climate crisis is the number of wasted materials, and when I learned how much waste we produce annually, I knew I had to help. I support Terracycle and SCARCE collection projects to combat this, because we must use our resources wisely, and these organizations help us do that.
Now I will let Maggie share her experiences.
I am Maggie Rhoads, a junior at Benet Academy. Although I got involved in the Environmental Club at Benet Academy this year, I have been interested in the issue of climate change ever since I was a freshman like Jordan.
Over the summer after my freshman year, I attended the Mizzou Climate Change Seminar. Here, aspiring journalists like myself and professionals were given a lecture on correctly reporting climate change. I learned climate change is a confusing yet important topic, and how people writing on the subject often make it confusing for the general public to understand. Some journalists copy what scientists are saying, using complicated scientific language the general public does not understand at times. I believe this is why not everyone is concerned about climate change.
Like Jordan, to take action against climate change, a group of students and I have collaborated with the Lisle Women's Club project Putting Good Soles to Work through the Environmental Club. This project collects used shoes through families at school so they can avoid landfills and do further harm to the environment. After the shoes have been collected, they will be sorted into reusable and non-reusable. The reusable shoes will go to donation centers and be given to people in need, while the non-reusable shoes will be taken to a place where they will be ground up and reused as different products. This is an excellent way other students and I have helped combat climate change.
Most reusable shoes are thrown away, further polluting the Earth. It is essential to take small steps to stop climate change and make those into bigger steps. From projects like Terracycle, to SCARCE, to Putting Good Soles to Work, we are fighting climate change by reducing waste and educating our peers on climate issues.
These projects are important to us because we are concerned about climate change and know that even small recycling events within our school community will help, because it both raises awareness and reduces waste in landfills. We hope the projects we have taken part in will have a ripple effect on our community that makes all of us more conscious of how much we buy and what we do with unneeded items.
• Jordan Marshall and Maggie Rhoads attend Benet Academy. They are members of Benet's Environmental Club.