Recycling is Back, But Composting is Still Absent
Jillian Slotnick
CORRESPONDENT
Andover High School has reintroduced recycling all around the school to reduce the amount of waste, but composting is still not functioning at AHS.
After almost three years, recycling is fully operational at AHS again. Bins have been placed in the cafeteria by the janitors for recyclables, and all hallways have also been equipped with rolling barrels. The school wants to be as environmentally friendly as possible, but the pandemic and other challenges made it difficult for recycling and composting to take place.
Melanie Cutler, environmental science teacher and a member of the Green Advisory Board, said, “Thankfully recycling is happening in the classrooms again.” She went on to say that “[t]here were some challenges as the [bins] we originally had [at the end of last year] were too big for kids to pick up and throw into the compactors. This year, recycling bins were nonexistent in the beginning because there was nowhere to dispose of the waste.”
According to the Recycling Club presidents Erin Huang and Aeyah Elbasiony, recycling has also been added to the cafeteria, and the student body has been correctly sorting their waste. Contamination, when waste is sorted into the wrong bins (compost in recycling bins, trash in compost, etc.), causes the entire batch, regardless of material, to be thrown into a landfill. This pollutes the environment, as opposed to saving it when we recycle and compost. The town is also forced to pay a fee for each contaminated batch.
In years past, the parent volunteer program has been a valuable resource for composting and recycling. Before the pandemic, parents came into the school to supervise the students composting and recycling and make sure they were putting their waste in the correct bins. When asked about the program, Principal Caitlin Brown said, “That would probably be more for composting than recycling because recycling is a little easier, and something we know how to do… I’m always happy to have parents come into the building, and if we thought that would work, it [would be] the composting that [we’d need parents’ help with]. [Only] having the assistant principals down there and some monitors… watching… makes it challenging for them to make sure that we aren’t contaminating compostable waste.”
Cutler elaborated on the composting process, “People have discussed students [supervising the waste stations] and in the past we tried it, but one of the challenges is students getting such a short amount of time to eat their lunch [already]. It’s possible students could organize it everyday.”
Cutler explained that composting in the high school may still be a long way away as the town has decided to begin the process in the elementary school. Eventually it will be brought up to the high school once the middle and elementary schools are able to perform it well. Cutler then said, “We’re hoping [composting] comes up the chain [from the lower schools] quickly.”
Supply chain issues are still affecting AHS’s ability to perform composting in addition to recycling, as they make compostable trays, plates, and silverware incredibly difficult to get. Before COVID these supplies made composting easy, but now with the added expenses from the pandemic the effort is often considered excessive and costly. However, even though students may not be composting, the kitchen staff is—as much as possible. The greater school body may not realize it, but AHS is still contributing, whenever possible, to protecting the environment.
The Recycling Club has donated a great deal of time and effort to make our recycling goals possible. Seema Gupte, the head of the club and an AHS biology teacher, has been a key part of implementing new waste management in the cafeteria. Her meetings with administration and members of the Green Advisory Board paved the way for school-wide recycling. Additionally the club as a whole has been extremely cooperative, and are the ones who empty the rolling hallway bins.
On recycling and composting at AHS, Brown was quick to issue her support. She said,“I am 100 percent in support of composting and recycling. [We need to work] with the town to make sure that we are doing what’s right for [the community] because [contamination] costs money and that takes away from the idea of both… I will continue to follow the lead of Ms. Cutler, Ms. Gupte, and the town officials on how we can best make sure that we can do composting and recycling well here.”
