The Red and Gold goes Green

• by Lauren Schultz & Isabelle Ghabash
• from the October 2008 issue of The Bulldog Press

How many times a day do you thoughtlessly toss old papers in the trash? What about Ziploc bags? Or plastic water bottles? Aluminum cans? Are you planning to fling this newspaper to the ground or in the nearest garbage can when you are finished with it? We never realize who wasteful we actually are, until we look at things from a wider perspective.

For being a relatively small high school, Judge uses a tremendous amount of paper. Our copy center orders 30 cases of paper about every 4 weeks. Each case has 5,000 sheets of paper. Every four weeks our school uses approximately 150,000 sheets of paper. Think about it: that’s 37,500 sheets a week, 7,500 sheets of paper a day, five days a week. So, for all 180 school days, Judge uses an estimate of 1,350,000 sheets of paper per school year. That’s not even including Scantrons or notebook paper that students use. According to howstuffworks.com, this amount of paper is equivalent to about 16 trees. For every four years at Judge, the school has used enough copy paper to cut down 64 trees.

Miss King, the new moderator of the growing Environmental Club, says that around 75% of the paper Judge uses can be recycled. But with more than 60 teachers, with several classes each, huge amounts of paper are a necessity. However, several teachers are trying to cut down on their paper waste. Mrs. Oles has her English students turning essays electronically. “We will become paperless in the future. I want to teach and prepare students for that by breaking the [paper] habit. I want them to be comfortable with the idea,” she says. When asked about how they reduce their paper waste, Senora Cummings and Senora Abuchaibe both had a simple answer: recycling.

Some Judge students put out a great amount of effort trying to save trees and protect our precious environment. For example, students in the Environmental Club meet every Thursday and Friday morning to recycle paper collected during the week in bins throughout the school. Individuals are also trying to save paper. Freshman Caitlin Gruis uses the “handy” recycle bins in each classroom and junior Liz Poulsen writes reminders on her palm instead of on sticky notes. “Who needs paper when you have an arm?” she says.

As well as conducting Judge’s recycling program, the Environmental Club has several projects to boost our “greenness.” Moderator and science teacher Miss King wasnts to bring environmentalism “to a bigger level than it has been before.”

“Our goal is to turn Judge green,” says Environmental Club president and senior Chesley Price.

The Environmental Club is planning to sell canvas tote bags to the student body. These can be used in place of plastic bags. They are also making t-shirts that could be bought by al students. They are promoting recycling and the use of the recycling bins near the cafeteria, not just for paper but for aluminum cans and plastics as well. Along with service projects in the works, Miss King and her green term are considering creating a “no-idle” zone for cars outside of school. They are also working with the cafeteria to reduce Styrofoam waste. Miss King says making Judge more environmentally-friendly “is a slow process, but hopefully we’ll get it started.”

If every student and teacher does a little, Judge could cut down on paper use and chop down future trees. With individual effort and the work of the Environmental Club, Judge’s school colors could become red, gold, and green.