You wander through the halls, keeping an eye out for your friends as you eat the donut holes that you bought at the beginning of break. They’re sweet and filling, and they’re gone too fast — you’re left with an empty paper boat, and the granulated sugar at the bottom is the only remnant of your snack. Peeking into a classroom, you spot a recycling bin with a handful of crumpled papers at the bottom.

You mentally shrug and throw the paper boat in the recycling bin.

It can’t be too bad, you think — but you’re wrong: though it’s made of paper, the grease and sugar on it make it unrecyclable. Unfortunately, recycling things that must be thrown away is a common action on the La Salle campus, and even the stuff thrown in recycling bins often ends up thrown away.

La Salle’s principal, Mr. Kuffner, is hoping to make a difference in La Salle by starting the Environmental Club, which aims to give La Salle the title of a Green School through various projects, the first involving changing the recycling program. In order to be a green school, a school needs to use resources efficiently, have a healthy environment, a curriculum that includes ecology, nutritious food, and sustainable community practices.

“We found out from our recycling hauler that most of what people were putting in the recycling bins was just going into the garbage,” said Mr. Kuffner. Due to the lack of manpower, recycling and garbage can’t be separated, and so everything was being thrown into the trash. Mr. Kuffner expressed frustration at that fact, and he hopes that the new recycling program will fix that, starting in the cafeteria. The club will be working mainly in the cafeteria first because that is where most of the school’s waste is.

Recycling is the first project that the Environmental Club will tackle, but it will by no means be the last. The main reason why the club is beginning with recycling is because there is space in the budget to buy new trash cans and recycling bins, and there was a recycling audit – a measurement of how much trash is thrown away and what kind of trash it is – in the fall. While La Salle’s administration could try to fix the school’s recycling problem on their own, Mr. Kuffner is excited about giving students a path to impact the environment and the fact that students involved in the club can change things in the school. “This isn’t just, ‘We want to get together and talk about it,’ ” said Mr. Kuffner. “You can make a real impact.”

While the Environmental Club’s first focus is changing the recycling and garbage programs in the cafeteria, the waste management will eventually extend to classrooms throughout La Salle. “I’d like for there to be a standardized system of recycling throughout the whole school,” said Mr. Kuffner.

When it comes to long-term goals, Mr. Kuffner said, “I would love for there to be some energy and momentum around becoming a Green School.” There are many organizations that can verify schools as “green,” including the U.S. Department of Education and the National Wildlife Federation. La Salle is already on its way to meeting some of the criteria to become a Green School — there is energy efficient lighting around the school and solar panels on the roof — but there is still a long way to go.

Mr. Kuffner said that he wanted to create the Environmental Club, not only to give the school a title, but because he wanted La Salle and La Salle’s students to be more green and to be kinder to the planet. “It’s about educating and having people understand, but also… it’s the right thing to do,” he said. He believes that, since everyone in La Salle is a part of the community, that everyone in La Salle should be involved with the Environmental Club.

If you would like to become a part of the Environmental Club, email Ms. Banta, La Salle’s Director of Community, at [email protected] and join the club’s Schoology group.

Creative Commons photo source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/vamcmag/4604325822