Many students at East are not aware of our school’s waste management system. This has caught the attention of many students in the building, but East does in fact have a recycling system for us! At the moment, every classroom holds two trash cans and one recycling bin, meanwhile the building in general has a ratio of 4:1 (27 trashcans and seven recycling bins total)—but that does not mean they are used properly. If there is cross contamination between the recyclable and non-recyclable items, then that container is automatically considered trash. Such circumstances have created an issue with East properly supporting environment conservation and recycling. Please, keep this system in mind and how crucial it is to make minor changes that will help our Earth in the future.

SeeGreen, East’s environmental club, is currently working towards making more recycling bins available for the school and creating a more distinguishable labeling system between trash and recycle bins. Moreover, SeeGreen is addressing a more district wide issue of changing the cafeteria plastic cutlery (“silverware”) to a biodegradable material! The club surveyed that there is a total of approximately one thousand cutleries used per week at East, which is over 6k grams (13.2 pounds) of plastic. This change would require a shift across all the schools in the Central Bucks School District, but raising awareness about this high rate of plastic usage and encouraging people who have the opportunity to use their own utensils would lead to progress.

Everyone, do your best to partake in recycling and stay aware of our environment—we only have one Earth!