I have noticed an issue with our school building regarding the limited number of recycling bins. Yesterday, I was drinking my coffee out of a recyclable glass bottle and because there were no recycling bins nearby, I didn’t know what to do with it.
Recycling is a major resource for disposing of papers, plastic bottles, cans, glass and cardboard. A majority of people in the U.S. assume that recycling isn’t worth the hassle, however, it has been proven to reduce the waste in our landfills. Products that are recycled are sorted then reused to create other materials or objects. Recycling is important for our community as well, by creating jobs and tax revenues. According to recyclingpartnership.com, in 2019, recycling in the U.S. had accounted for 757,000 jobs, $36.6 billion in wages and $6.7 billion in tax revenues.
Recycling has stopped in all area high schools in Howard County due to funding and budget cuts. This was terrible news to the special education class who used to go around school and empty them each week. This was encouraging for them and allowed them to be passionate about something they enjoyed doing. The KHS Environmental Club wrote letters requesting the program be started, but later found out much of the collected material was not actually being recycled because there was too much of it and not enough market to repurpose it. I feel this matter has changed drastically as the city of Kokomo has a comprehensive recycling program.
The best way to encourage a better environment is to spread the word about reducing, reusing and recycling.
“The little funding the county has maintained has gone to special projects for each school. Our high school is currently working to process plastic bottle cap lids to be repurposed into plastic benches or tables,” said Environmental Club sponsor Vince Lorenz.
The Environmental Club has been working on this project since 2017 and are going through the sorting process now. They are one step closer to improving our environment and recycling ways. This is a great program, but we can do more.
I hope after reading this you are encouraged to spread the word about recycling, reducing, reusing and urging our schools officials to address the issue.
