By Aubrey Barry
Over the past few decades, trash and waste have been a big focus in many communities; one aspect that most people forget about is schools. On average, a public school will take in about 320,000 sheets of paper per year according to Record Nation. For the past several years, Louisville Public Schools have not had a prominent recycling program. This year, however, high school math teacher, Mr. Rice, has set out to change that.
When he came to the school five years ago, Rice was astounded to hear that we did not have a recycling program.
He stated, “It’s not even a tree hugger, hippie thing. It’s just if you can do something to keep the planet healthier by reducing, reusing, recycling.”
During the summer and start of the school year, Rice set up a program that supplied each classroom with its own bin and other recycling necessities. By partnering with Keep Cass County Beautiful, a non-profit organization that educates and enables citizens to sustain our ecosystem, he was able to cover the cost of a dumpster for the school.
Even though we haven’t used a recycling program in over five years, LHS once had a stable recycling program. Instead of buying all new supplies, Mr. Rice was able to find and use some of the containers from previous years.
It's easy to recognize those blue containers, and now kids will be able to use them in any part of school. This change will have a positive effect on our school environment. With this program, our school has the opportunity to produce less waste and reuse commonly used materials like paper and cardboard.
Sophomore Emily Muntz states,” I think it’s important so that we minimize the amount of waste that we have and to be able to reuse all the papers and stuff that we don’t need.”
With the amount of supplies that schools across America use, this change could have a drastic impact, even in a small school like ours.