Friday Recycling Turns Trash Into Cash
It's a Friday ritual: During second period, ASB students fan out across the campus going from classroom to classrooms to collect and empty the blue recycling bins. But the Timberwolf Times wanted to know . . . Where does all that recycling go? Does it make any money? And, if so, where does that money go?
According to ASB Advisor, Mr. Ortiz-Luis, the Friday recycling is one of the ways ASB raises funds for school events such as dances, new computers, food, rallies, and other things to support a better high school experience.
All year the collection of recycling goes into a fund which can go to a variety of places. Kayla Hilbig, ASB Junior Vice President, affirms, “Our ASB is in charge of turning in recycling and collecting the money to use it towards school refs, updating things on campus, and student store.” This year ASB recycling raised $609. That money goes to an overall fund dedicated to the school. Recycling is just one income that helps offset the prices of events that occur at the school.
Each ASB student is assigned a specific wing of the school where they go to collect the recycling. Ortiz-Luis, says, “Every Friday those students will take those blue bins and they kind of gather them together in their wing and they separate out items that are CRV, which is California Redemption Value.”
According to Ortiz-Luis, paper is not apart of the money return group, but it still gets recycled by ASB and should be placed in the blue recycling bin inside classrooms.
Once collected by the ASB students, the recycling goes to the large bins located behind WaveCrest Cafe. Ortiz-Luis points out, “Some things that are happening are that some kids or teachers might be putting things that are not CRV in the large bins and that actually doesn’t help. Like sometimes if you have like a lot of cardboard or a lot of poster board from a project, sometimes it ends up in the large bins.” According to Ortiz-Luis, this is problematic because Urban Corps, the company that processes the recycling, does not acknowledge the bins if there is more than 10% of non-recyclable items.
So, now that we know where the recycling money goes and how the process works, we can all do our part to make it work even better. Apparently, what's good for the planet, is also good for student life at MVHS.