After its revival in the fall of 2024, the Earth Club has continued to stride forward in the hopes of making La Salle a greener place.

The Earth Club has divided its broad mission down into smaller goals, which they refer to as initiatives. This year’s initiative centers around the collection of disposal aluminum cans, which, until now, were lumped together with standard recycling.

According to senior and club Data Manager Audrey Waters — who proposed the idea — the initiative acts as a follow-up to one of last year’s Climate Science projects, which successfully increased the amount of canned beverages provided in the cafeteria and decreased the amount of plastic containers.

“If we’re going to have all of these cans, all of this is just money that we’re essentially throwing away,” she said.

Both the Club Moderator, science teacher Mr. Matt Owen, and Waters described their efforts as successful, with the can drive raising over $400 in the roughly six weeks it has been going on for.

“Truthfully, we did not think that it would raise this much money,” Waters said. “We were kind of astonished.”

Like the 10 other states with similar laws, Oregon has a longstanding “Bottle Bill,” allowing anyone to deposit cans and bottles at designated collection centers, offering 10 cents per item.

This initiative offers many benefits for the Earth Club and La Salle as a whole. According to Mr. Owen, the funds accumulated from the BottleDrop returns can be reinvested for the Earth Club to purchase more resources and make itself more sustainable.

“[It was] a way for us to raise funds quickly, for us to help make our school … greener,” he said. “Then to give that back to our community as well, in terms of being able to use the funds for more sustainable initiatives.”

According to the club’s Operations Director, senior Ashley Kamhoot, the Earth Club hopes to use some of the funds to purchase several pieces of equipment to aid in their collection process and to reduce waste — including their own cart as well as reusable gloves so that they do not have to use disposable ones.

Once the cans are collected at the end of the day, they are bagged and driven to a recycling center, with each full bag generally being worth around seven to eight dollars.

“We’ve had well over 20 different people help assist with the cans and bottles so far, and those numbers continue to grow,” Mr. Owen said.

Though the initiative has seen great success, one challenge, according to Waters and Mr. Owen, is students crushing their cans or damaging them before throwing them in the bag.

When cans are crushed, the BottleDrop machine will not take them, slowing the sorting and collection process down.

For future initiatives, the Earth Club plans to continue to hone in on recycling, according to Mr. Owen, as well as branch out to schoolwide service and campus cleanup opportunities.

The Earth Club is also working on increasing member count and club participation, according to Kamhoot, as all of the current club leaders are seniors. To do this, the Earth Club is planning on using some of the funds to implement an occasional prize system for members who actively participate.

“We really want this to continue after we’re gone, and so [this year] has really been focused on trying to get as many people as involved as possible,” she said.

Students interested in joining or helping out the Earth Club should Schoology message Mr. Owen or come speak to any of the club leaders which — in addition to Kamhoot and Waters — includes seniors Ali Moran, Madeline Schnyder, and Taryne Steinman.

“We’d love to have more people involved and to help run more initiatives at the same time,” Mr. Owen said.