Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

As you walk in the hallways you might see these blue bins out in the hallways and wonder what they are. Those bins are put there by the Earth Club to help the school become more environmentally friendly. The club is ran by German teacher Joseph Cook, and Dennis Wortman who also helps with the recycling program. So what does Earth Club do to try to keep the school environmentally friendly? Well Earth Club is in charge of collecting as many "plastic bottles, glass, tin, and aluminum," says Cook.

But then you wonder what about all that paper that we recycle in the classrooms? Who takes care of that? Don't worry that is all taken care of by Wortman. Cook says that " the blue recycle bins are for everyone and that the grey bins are for the classrooms."

Ok so what about those giant orange trash cans? Those aren't trash cans, they're big recycling bins that can hold about 60 pounds of recyclables each. "The school currently has 12 right now and we have 720 reusable resources from the school to Monroe County Solid Waste. From Monroe County Solid Waste it is then transported to Jon's Disposal in Whitewater Wi. and from there it is then farmed out to different states in the U.S and Canada," says Cook.

So Earth Club is doing a really good job with managing all that but that's not all they do. They also have a 2 mile stretch on highway 71 where they pick up all the garbage on the road twice a year.

Some accomplishments from the Earth Club are saving $.58 per pound of recyclable and waste fill up, and they have 760 pounds of recyclable and waste fill up. The school also recycled a total of "about 11,040 pounds of recycled goods last year," and we can always recycle more in later years.

The Earth Club doesn't just think about the short term effects but also long term. They say that for the long term that "non of this is going to a landfill, it keeps money in the economy because we don't have to pay for new resources instead we are using what we already have."

All of this is what Earth Club is doing now but it doesn't end here. Cook says, "we have bigger plans," one of the new plans is "recycling in all the elementary and preschools." By doing this when the younger children get to the high school, they're not lost and know what to do when they see a recycling bin instead of ignoring it and throwing their trash away in a garbage can. This will create a good habit for them at a young age and all of our total recycling amounts can double and even triple by bringing this idea to all the Sparta area schools. We would be one of the first schools in all of Wisconsin to have all of the area schools recycling and hopefully other schools notice and start their own recycling club to help put the environment.