Falconer
The Torrey Pines High School
Friday, March 24, 2017
Vol. 42, Issue 6, 32 pages
www.tphsfalconer.com
Reduce, reuse, recycle? by Maya Kota and Lily Nilipour Custodian Dave Ham makes his daily rounds in the hallways of the B building after school. He enters each classroom, picks up both the trash and recycling bins by the door and then empties them into a single waste receptacle. According to the SDUHSD Quarterly Refuse and Recycle Weights report for October, November and December of 2016, TPHS recycled 5.01 tons of waste, the second-highest amount of recycling at a school in the district. But, according to Ham, the custodial staff has a limited role in handling recyclable materials on campus. “Cardboard goes into a recycling bin, and then ... each room is supposed to have two recycling wastebaskets — one for white paper and one for plastic bottles and aluminum cans,” Ham said. “Most rooms have those, but they aren’t used properly. Some custodians do more recycling than others, but as far as the paper goes, it all goes into the trash for me because I don’t have time to sort the trash from the recycling.” School plant supervisor Logan Helm said that custodians “leave the bottles and cans alone” in classrooms due to possible contamination and time restraints on their maintenance responsibilities. “It’s hard to separate [trash and recycling] because ... if there’s bottles and cans in the trash, [the custodians] don’t have time to be sorting them,” Helm said. Although EDCO, the school’s trash and recycling disposal service, pays the district for each container of recycling it collects, a contaminated container gets sent directly to a landfill, according to SDUHSD Director of Maintenance & Operations, Dan Love. EDCO charges the district to haul each container of trash. “If you have contaminated recycling material ... [EDCO] will not pay us for that, and they will haul that as the same price as trash,” Love said. “[However], we are not going through the trash and doing a diversion program. There’s not enough time to do that, and that would be giving the custodians much more than they’re capable of doing while getting everything clean on campus.” Because the custodial staff does not have the sufficient time or resources to dedicate to recycling, Key Club, a service-based campus club, takes primary responsibility for collecting and disposing of bottles and cans. “Our school doesn’t actually recycle because we don’t have the facilities to process separate recycled items,” Key Club president Maddy Lim (12) said. “What Key Club does is go through and sort through all the recycling, so that way all the plastic bottles will actually get recycled.” Members of Key Club, organized and led by recycling coordinators Lauren Hanna (11) and Ava Hanna (11), are assigned rooms to sort through all wastebaskets to gather bottles and cans. Then, they take the materials to a local recycling center in the Highlands to raise money to fund the club and donate to charities. Since October 2012, Key Club has made $1,466.11 from their efforts, as of Mar. 10. According to Ava Hanna, cross-contamination between trash and recyclables is common in wastebaskets across campus. Despite the improved separation of waste in designated bins, PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY ALLY JENSEN/FALCONER
students “underestimate the worth of what they have” and should be more aware of how they are handling their waste, Lauren Hanna said. “Being a part of recycling and seeing all these trash cans and all the places we have to hit, I realize that the janitors have a humongous task on their hands,” Ava said. “I don’t think we should expect the janitors to do more than they already do with keeping this place clean.” TPHS nutrition services also supports the recycling program at the school, which may account for the bulk of the five tons reportedly recycled by TPHS. Nutrition services supervisor Rose Hernandez said that most waste generated by the kitchen is recycled. “We’ve stopped using foam, ... we recycle all the cartons, all the boxes that everything comes in,” Hernandez said. “The plastic, we separate that as well ... There’s a lot less trash; we pretty much don’t throw too much out [because] I try to organize it so that we don’t have many leftovers.” Even though Key Club and nutrition services recycle some trash on campus, other materials — primarily white paper — are not recycled at all. According to Ham, he and other custodians mix white paper with other trash when emptying out the bins after school hours. “The teachers are out the door ... on Friday night at 2:35, and so a lot of the rooms are locked up, so [Key Club] can’t get to them and [the recycling] becomes trash to the custodian,” Ham said. “My idea was either have the kids do recycling at the lunch hour ... or have the teachers put the recycling wastebaskets outside their doors.” Since the responsibility for managing waste lies with both maintenance staff and students, Ava said administration should enforce proper waste disposal, and providing more recycling bins would help accomplish that goal. “The administration is able to get the word out efficiently and talk to the student body with the most authority, so that way people listen,” Ava said. “I don’t think a lot of people are aware that the school doesn’t recycle, and that them not caring about what they put inside each trash can ... is making an effect.” Love said that he would like to collaborate more with the custodial crews on campus to improve recycling efforts from everyone, including staff and students.
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