Sustainability club has recently assumed the responsibility of disposing recyclable materials at WHHS. Susan Macsotai, a science teacher at WHHS, manages the club with Marlee Rush, ‘25 and Luke Greiner, ‘25.
“[Sustainability club has] been around a long time, and it’s kind of taken on different roles over the years, doing different things around the school,” Macsotai said. “Last year, Environmental [science] classes were still doing the recycling… This year we kind of took over.”
Students can volunteer to empty the recycling bins during their study hall. Rush became involved in helping dispose of recycling via a cleanup of the football field.
“My sophomore year we were doing a football [field] cleanup, and you would get free football tickets, and I was like, ‘Oh, wow, this is actually great… I’m helping clean up the school,” Rush said. “Then I got into volunteering during my study hall too, to clean up around the classrooms.”
Student volunteers collect the recycling from all of the classrooms around the building and bring it to the bins by South field and Marx stadium so that on Wednesdays it can be collected by the recycling company.
Last year, the club became involved in locker clean-outs at the end of fourth quarter, something they have continued this year.
“We’ll have recycling bins in the different parts of the hallway, the weeks leading up to exams, so that during your lunch bell, you can clean out your locker,” Macsotai said. “We also have reusable bins where if you have extra notebook paper you don’t want, or colored pencils…you can put them in plastic bins [to be reused].”
Next year, the club plans to start using the Recycling Hub as well so they can begin to take markers, pens and other items they previously couldn’t. This is a part of the club’s broader goal to spread awareness regarding recycling.
“Last year we had a table [with] a little wheel that people can spin [and] answer a question about [recycling] facts… [then] they get candy,” Rush said.
This year, the club created a video regarding recyclable and non-recyclable items in an attempt to minimize the issues caused by students incorrectly placing items in the recycling bin.
“We find roaches and things in the school because we’re throwing food in the recycling,” Mascotai said. “When they think that, you know, they’re doing a favor by tossing a cup of coffee in [the recycling bin] that still has coffee in it, it actually means that we have to throw out everything in that recycling bin, so now we can’t recycle it.”
The club hopes to focus more on recycling plastic silverware in the future, largely due the fact that a high volume of it ends up in the landfill. However, the biggest focus still remains getting students to recycle the right items.
“I would really, really like for people to pay attention to what they are putting into those recycling bins [because of] what we do with [the recyclable materials],” Rush said.