Wauconda High School Students Bring Recycling to D118
Wauconda High School’s Future Business Leaders of America students Max Buchanan, Claire Harte, and Faith Healy wanted to make a difference in their community. They talked with their FBLA adviser, Wendy Mills, who told them about an upcoming opportunity: a project titled “Community Service Project.”
Community Service Project is an FBLA event where students from all over the country aim to improve their local area.
“We wanted to make a difference,” Buchanan said, “We knew that pollution was a major issue for towns worldwide, so we looked at how Wauconda was affecting the climate.”
After talking with Maria Weisbruch at the Wauconda Chamber of Commerce, the three quickly learned that the Wauconda Schools, District 118, hadn’t recycled in over a decade.
Working with their advisor, Buchanan, Harte, and Healy decided to make recycling the main focus of their project. They arranged to go to Wauconda’s United Partnership Meeting to meet representatives and officials of Wauconda who could help contribute to their project.
Harte had the idea to make dog toys out of old T-shirts.
“I knew that however we were going to raise money, it had to be by reducing, reusing, or recycling our waste and our Textile Dog Toys were the perfect fit,” she said.
They handmade dozens of dog toys and sold them at the farmer’s markets in downtown Wauconda. Buchanan and Harte worked a booth at the farmer’s market, selling their dog toys for five dollars each.
The team later met with more members of the community to learn how they could bring recycling back to Wauconda High School. Among these were Matthews Middle School principal Josh Peterson, D118 Superintendent Dr. Dave Wilm, Waste Management representative Meghann Maves and other Wauconda High School faculty and staff.
During these meetings, the trio decided that although recycling at all six schools in District 118 was a lofty goal, they could educate the younger students about recycling and reducing waste. They collaborated with 30 FBLA volunteers and traveled to all three of the elementary schools: Wauconda Grade School, Robert Crown and Cotton Creek.
They split the volunteers into groups and were able to educate nearly 1,500 students over the course of only one day. They read books about reducing waste, reusing items, and recycling for first and second grade. For the third, fourth, and fifth-grade students, they gave a short presentation about recycling and played a game with them. Recycling stickers were awarded to every student that they taught, and a special, eco-friendly prize was awarded to the teams that won the recycling game. This not only helped them include more students in their project but also allowed them to reach a different demographic within the community.
Finally, after months of work, it was announced that Wauconda High School would begin recycling on Jan. 8. When the second semester began, Buchanan, Harte and Healy, along with some volunteers, went around the school collecting the recyclable papers and dumping them into the recycling receptacle being collected by Waste Management employees.
They currently have a schedule set up to collect recycling twice a week and are in the works of creating a recycling committee to make a more sustainable way to collect the recycling.
¨It’s been an amazing experience that I’m so lucky to be a part of,” Healy said.
The trio is competing at the Illinois FBLA State Conference this April with hopes of making it to nationals in Orlando, Florida later this year.
“Educate your families on recycling,” Harte urges the community to make a difference, “share with others what they can do at their schools, at their homes, and in their community. It only takes one small step to make a big difference.”