Teachers Must Educate Students About Recycling

Being “green” and taking initiative doesn’t necessarily rely on recycling. NHS lacks the knowledge and motivation to recycle and Principal Jon Zagel would like to see a change. “It needs to be a priority,” Zagel said, planning to enforce recycling and take other steps in turning our campus “green.” To modernize NHS he’d like to place wind turbines on the roof to create energy and add lights to every classroom that automatically shut off when the room is empty for more than 20 minutes.

But as we wait for major changes to take place, can’t we work on the little things? Teachers have a responsibility to lead us in the right direction and very few take the opportunity to encourage recycling. Some do their part, like social studies teacher Adam Scarberry. Scarberry reuses paper and views recycling as not only good for the environment, but financially smart.

YAS Director Taylor Olsen teaches his students to sort recycling into the proper categories: paper, plastic and returnables. Olsen plans to take their effort school wide by sorting all of the bins throughout the school to make sure no garbage lies in the wrong place.
When it comes to recycling, the same issue always comes up—lack of education. <Charmek.org> states it’s alright to put scrap paper, newspaper, magazines, flattened cardboard, construction paper, notebook paper and computer paper in the recycling bins. Tissues, napkins, paper towels, wax paper, wrappers and food are not recyclable.

Recycling is something simple we can do here at NHS; students just need education, motivation and leadership from the staff to actually get it done. Teachers need to take initiative and reinforce reusing resources and students need to care. It’s our planet and we only have one chance to take care of it.

By Rache’ll Brown