An environmentalist

BY AUDREY MEAD WITH SARAH MEAD

Audrey is a curious eleven-year-old who wants to learn more about everything. She is searching for kids in the Rochester area who are doing big things. Today she interviews fourteen-year-old Noah Moretter. He has started his own recycling business. He is in the eighth grade at Johanna Perrin Middle School in Fairport, and he has a younger brother named Aiden who is in sixth grade. He likes Italian food like spaghetti and watching Outer Banks on Netflix.

I heard that you really care about recycling. What got you interested in it?

I have been interested in recycling ever since I was three. I remember a garbage man coming to my house and I thought it was so cool. After that I waited for the garbage truck every day and I’ve continued to be passionate about the whole refuse industry ever since.

When did you decide to start your own recycling business?

I started it in 2020, right about when COVID started. I noticed that people around that time stopped recycling, and I was fascinated by that. I thought I could make a big difference. My aunt is a graphic designer and she helped me design a logo.

Tell me more about your business. I collect bottles and cans, and I recycle them at the Palmyra Recycling Center and Can Kings. I use some of the money on my business costs like my website, logo, and business cards. And I save some of it for college. But every year I donate a big portion of the money I earned to a local charity.

How can someone become a customer?

They can visit noahsrecycling.weebly.com or contact me at noahsrecycling@gmail.com and sign up to be a customer. Then we set a time and day for your collection, and it’s free.

How much time do you spend on your business?

I usually spend 3–4 days a week on collecting, recycling, and keeping up with emails from customers. I also attend committee meetings like the sustainability committee in Fairport. I service around ten customers a week including some businesses that weren’t recycling previously.

Do you have any hobbies or secret talents?

I have a YouTube channel with over four thousand subscribers where I talk about waste and recycling.

Where do you see yourself in five or ten years?

I want to go to college for environmental science, and my dream has always been to be a CEO of a waste management company.

Favorite book?

Picking Up: On the Streets and Behind the Trucks with the Sanitation Workers of New York City by anthropologist Robin Nagle.

BY: CAMBRIE ECKERT

discovered in New York. The first one was found at Farview Gold Course, near Avon, in 1990, while the were essentially enlarged teeth, which would start to form at birth and continue to grow throughout their

Bloomfield mastodon], whereas with the Farview mastodon, we found the tip of one tusk that’s fairly complete, and then a fragmentary portion of the other one,” McIntosh says. “We took a little section out of there and we were able to look at the growth bands. We were able to say that he’s probably twenty years old or so.”

These mastodons’ teeth and bones were also used in determining their age before they died. The Bloomfield mastodon had a worn-out tooth with no roots and a fused back, which indicates that it was an older adult. McIntosh estimates the Farview mastodon to have been younger, while the Bloomfield mastodon was likely in his forties.

In this exhibit, both mastodons are displayed in glass cases for visitors to observe and learn from. Before their extinction, mastodons “ruled the forest” in herds, weighing as much as six tons (12,000 pounds) each.

“Starting about two million years ago they started showing up both in Alaska and as far south as Mexico. They came in by crossing the land bridge, possibly during some interglacial period,” McIntosh says. “Then about 10,000 years ago, they all just went extinct—but they weren’t the only ones.”

Although mastodons and many other Ice-Age mammals went extinct around the same time, scientists can’t agree on what led to their demise. One theory suggests humans hunted them to extinction.

“There’s no doubt about it that there weren’t people here two million years ago. They weren’t here even 500,000 years ago. Is it just a coincidence that all these large animals go extinct when people arrive or not?” McIntosh says.

What happened to the mastodons? No one really knows for sure. At RMSC’s dig site, you’ll be able to come up with your own theories, and perhaps crack the case yourself.