Recycling Programs: Renewed at OHS
By Alicia Gan
In the weeks before Spring Break, Turtle Club restarted their programs on plastic and paper recycling, bringing back recycling bins to our campus. From bottles and cans, to paper and cardboard, to electronics, here is an overview of all the recycling programs at Olympian, both active and inactive. Plus a couple of side notes.
Status of recycling programs: Renewed: Bottles and cans (outdoor) The school custodians manage the bottle and can recycling program outside the classrooms. The large, blue bins with circular opening are bottle and can recycling bins. These recycling bins are found beside the regular black trashcans, as you should have already noticed. Please refrain from throwing cardboard, bottles with fluids, food wraps, and dirty plastic containers into these bins. Bottle and can bins are solely for that: clean bottles and cans. Renewed: Paper and cardboard (classroom) Turtle Club manages the paper and cardboard recycling program inside classrooms. The slim, rectangular bins with long slit openings are paper and cardboard bins. These recycling bins are found in every classroom. Students gain community service hours every other week after school by helping to collect paper from the recycling bins inside classrooms. Every other Thursday, club members meet in Room 612 at 3:00 pm to sign in and start collecting bin contents. This is a fun, social activity that teaches responsibility both for the environment and the school itself, both of which are especially important considering the state of trash on campus this year. Pending: Bottles and cans (classroom) The Special Education department typically manages the bottle and can recycling program inside classrooms. The slim, rectangular bins with circular openings are bottle and can recycling bins. Due to continuing COVID concerns, as well as improper recycling practices, this program is currently inactive. The Turtle Club may take over for the rest of the year. Students with moderate-severe and moderate-severe-transitioned status help clean up the school by collecting paper from the recycling bins on classrooms. Every week, students rotate around school classrooms collecting paper from the recycling bins. This is an activity that helps students with intellectual disabilities or significant autism build community and bond with one another. It also helps fund their afterschool activities. Active: Electronic devices The Sweetwater district manages the electronic device recycling program. The program uses large, 5 x 5 ft blue bins to store electronic devices, which are picked up by the district once they’re full. The SUHSD district works with each school’s IT department and a third company to manage this program. The district typically collects two or three of these gigantic bins from Olympian every semester; sometimes even more. Every three years, much of the electronic equipment at schools have to be replaced. Part of it because teenagers are reckless, part of it because technology evolves quickly and no one wants to use slow, outdated tech. Mice, keyboards, laptops, monitors, old scantron scanners, printers that would be more expensive to fix than to replace – all of these go under the bleachers at the football stadium, awaiting pick up. Impact of COVID on recycling programs Olympian high school has long been a recycling school. From electronic devices to paper and plastic, recycling was reasonably thorough on campus. However, certain recycling programs have been inactive since the stay-at-home order was first issued in mid-March of 2020, nearly two years ago. Distance learning provided some obvious challenges to school paper and plastic recycling programs. For one, there were no students on campus during distance learning. Lack of trash effectively disabled these programs, as students could not recycle trash when there was no trash at all. Coming back to school, all recycling programs barring e-waste continued to be put on hold due to COVID restrictions. It was considered dangerous for students to walk in and out of classrooms to collect trash. Of course, the fact that students would recycle improperly and thus contaminate the trash inside recycling bins also factored into that decision. However, as COVID restrictions continue subsiding, recycling programs have begun restarting. How to properly recycle As a general reminder, only throw clean, recyclable material into the recycling bins. Help the school make the best of its recycling program by sorting the trash into the correct bins. If unsure of whether something can be recycled, it’s better to either not recycle it, look it up, or take it home when you will have more time to decide with your own recycling bin. Please be respectful of people’s time and refrain from throwing trash in the wrong bins. Food and unrecyclable items thrown in recycling bins adds time and work to students and staff in all programs. Paper recycling bins in particular can get ruined very easily. A single drink or food item left inside can make an entire batch of 1000+ papers unrecyclable. |
An overview of the recycling programs currently active at Olympian High School.
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