According to the National Recycling coalition, only seven percent of trash in Indianapolis is recycled. The rest of this waste is sent to landfills and much of it is thrown out onto the street.
At NC students hope to change this through participating in the NC Recycling Club.
Recycling club has been in NC for at least 10 years. The club has been meeting since Aug. and is mostly student led.
After school on Mondays the students meet with Jill Thrasher-Reid in A521.
The club president junior Mia Griffin opens the meeting.
Griffin has been a member of the Recycling club for two years but this is her first year as president.
“Last year just kind of sucked,” Griffin said. “Nobody joined or came or anything. They elected me to be president to get more people, projects and stuff like that since we didn’t really do anything last year.”
After the opening students get into groups and are assigned routes pick up the recycling.
They are given a large bin to dump the paper teachers put into their recycling bins into the big bin.
The students then take the bins out to the dumpsters.
Junior Lily Papesh has been a member of the club since the beginning of this school year.
Papesh finds the club fun and sees it a great way to help the environment.
“It’s really fun and it’s helping with the environment and it’s something I’ve found I love to do,” Papesh said.
The mission of recycling club is to make sure the paper actually gets recycled.
“We only focus on one thing to make sure the paper actually gets recycled and not thrown away,” Thrasher-Reid said. “Since we are in school there is a lot of paper.”
The club also provides students a way to do something that has meaning.
“We give people a quick way to do something every week that they find meaningful, it is very social, as you can see, and it’s just a fun way to have a project and see your goal met every week,” Thrasher-Reid said. “Most recently they have participated in different environmental projects outside of the school.
Members also hope to bring awareness to the environment among NC students.
“I think it really helps everybody pay attention to the fact that our school can help, like, the environment too, like, we’re actually doing and recycling,” Papesh said.
The club also collaborates with the PACES classes to help collect trash.
“So PACES does the downstairs recycling, and then they shred it, and then on Mondays, we go to their room, pick up all of their recycling and take it out to the dumpster,” Thrasher-Reid said.
This year Recycling Club is starting a new project to create a recycled plastic bench.
They will be collecting all sorts of plastic caps and lids with a goal of at least 200 lbs of plastic.
Once the goal is met the plastic will be shipped off to a plant in Evansville and a bench will be shipped back to school.
“It’ll be something that everybody can use on the campus,” Papesh said.
The club will continue to meet every Monday and is open for anyone to join at any time.
