September 29, 2025 by Kayla Magnus (‘29)
As kids, we were taught “The Three Rs”: Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. In learning these three terms, we grew up understanding that recycling is key to protecting and preserving our Earth. Recycling takes so many of the materials we use daily, like paper, plastic, glass, and metals, and reuses them. These items are taken to a facility that manufactures them into new products ready for purchasing. However, if these materials don’t get recycled, they will take an extremely long time to decompose. Take a plastic bag, for example: a single Target bag used to hold groceries can take up to one thousand years to fully deteriorate. As for glass, a singular glass bottle can last up to one million years! Because these items can stay intact for so long, oceans end up full of trash, landfills quickly take over fields, and animals become subject to choking on plastic carelessly left in their environments. If this continues, in the next 25 years there will be more plastic in our ocean than fish. As humans on this planet, we cannot let that happen.
Ever since I saw a custodian at my elementary school scoop up the “recyclables” out of their separate bin and throw them into the trash to be carried away mixed together, I was convinced that the idea of “recycling” items was all a hoax. However, I was proven wrong. The simple answer is yes; we do recycle in our schools, and these items do often make it to a recycling facility. Sometimes though, custodians are forced to take what’s in the schools’ recycling bins and toss it in with the trash. Now you might think the custodians are just being lazy or that the school truly just doesn’t recycle and that the paper boxes are a masquerade to make it look like we do. But no, the reason the things put in the recycling bin aren’t being reprocessed is because of us, the students. Every time you throw a soda you only drank half of in the bin or any sort of food or soiled container, they can’t recycle it anymore. One of our own custodians said so himself, saying that SSHS has around twenty recycling bins in the back of the school that are used all the time, and the only time he’s ever seen someone throw out recyclables is if they’re no longer recyclable.
If we all pitch in and do our part, our school can be even cleaner and help the environment. All you have to do is refrain from throwing out liquids and foods in the recycle bins. By putting leftover food in the trash and dumping liquids into sinks, students can be a part of making a difference. While throwing everything in one bin may save you some time, it is hurting our earth. Another thing you can do is know what can be recycled and what can’t. Paper, metal cans, most plastics (containing this symbol ), many types of glass, uncrumbled aluminum foil, and cardboard can be recycled. Plastic bags, Styrofoam, ceramics, tissues, wet paper, and paper towels cannot. We all want a cleaner and healthier world to grow old in and for kids and grandchildren to grow up in, so do your part to recycle, and do so correctly.