Recycling in Schools

By Joshua Madera

East High School isn’t doing a fantastic job with recycling. Schools normally contain a large supply of paper which lots of money is spent.

A school of 100 teachers utilizes 250,000 pieces of paper each year leading the wastes of schools being at least 40 percent paper. Recycling paper is needed in schools to prevent 4 billion trees from being cut down around the world. Recycling in schools will increase the rate of recycled wastes because 75 percent of paper waste in the United States are recyclable but as citizens, only a little over 34 percent is recycled.
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Jason Taylor states, “Recycling is a behavior. Unless it's already an ingrained habit for someone to recycle, they likely won't do so unless it's made very convenient for them. For example, some people struggle to throw out their trash in the giant trash bins that are all over the school. Some struggle to throw out their school lunches in the trash bins that are literally inches away from them.” The quote reveals that our habits as human beings can lead to negative effects on our environment as littering, not recycling, and contamination within the water. Recycling in schools is a problem because in certain places if we don’t see anyone recycling and littering instead we may develop the same type of habit. Another problem is that not recycling and constantly littering we will be in a state of global warming which will be difficult to get out of.