Reduce, Reuse, Recycle are known as the three Rs of waste management. “Reducing your carbon footprint, reusing items you don’t necessarily need to trash after using once such as water bottles and containers, recycling anything else you have no more use for to make it anew,” said senior Caitlin Sandoval, the leader of our school’s recyling team.
The recycling team takes the recyclable materials such as paper, plastic, cardboard and cans to the back of the school where everything is sorted into separate categories for either disposal or recycling.
Motivations for joining the recycling team aren’t the same reasons and motivations for helping with the recycling. Freshman Suzen Ortega talked about how she wanted to help the environment and the school. She believes that small actions could lead to significant changes. Freshman Miriam Ortega joined the team because “I don’t like dirty places, and I want to help the school.”
For me, joining the recycling team felt like a natural step after my volunteer experiences. I’ve contributed over 231 hours of community service, and I’ve learned that there’s a real satisfaction in helping others and doing my part to keep our planet clean. Whether we’re sorting recyclables or brainstorming new projects, the satisfaction we feel when working together is what keeps our team going strong.
Schools face environmental issues, and Caitlin Sandoval plans on tackling these issues. She stated, “The biggest environmental issues are (1) the amount of littering and trash spread out along the hallways, stairs, and fields due to students not caring or just simply being uneducated about the negative impact that has on the school’s environment, but also (2) the amount of waste we produce and how that contributes to Miami High’s large carbon footprint.”
Every day we produce so much waste primarily from uneaten school lunch, which kids get and end up throwing away in its entirety, and that amount of buildup produced every day contributes towards worsening climate change.
Environmental care isn’t exactly popular with students. Caitlin’s way to make it more fun is by implementing games and challenges to get her team more involved. She talked about a ‘Recycle Relay,’ where she splits up the crew members into different teams. They had to use everything they learned about how to properly recycle, competing to see who could recycle the most effectively. It turned out to be a big hit—they really enjoyed it!
Moving forward, she plans to add more challenges like this and get teachers involved as well. By making these activities engaging and competitive, she hopes to create a stronger culture of environmental awareness and responsibility at our school. This both tackles the school’s environmental issue and would make recycling more fun for students.
