Lucy Bobb ’26
St. Andrew’s used to recycle classroom waste, but ever since Covid hit, this stopped. While the school recycled in the large bin behind Macdonald Hall, the classroom bins reverted to trash over the past few years.
Now, there are new recycling bins in classrooms. These bins can be used to recycle glass, plastic, or paper. There are also new bins in the hallways that add more opportunities to recycle instead of throwing recyclables in trash cans, which helps prevent the amount of waste being sent to landfills.
There are many people, groups, and factors that go into maintaining an environmentally positive recycling program.
The Environmental Club, along with their sponsor, Ms. Nevel, and their president, Reid Wincup, worked to make announcements and hang posters around the school to promote the recycling program returning.
However, it seems that the St. Andrew’s community is still not fully aware. One cause of the confusion may be that there are black trash bags in the blue recycling bins in classrooms that make them look like trash cans.
To help fix this problem, Ms. Howenstein, the Assistant to the Director of Operations, said that the operations department is working to change the color of the bags. She said that the “recycling bins are supposed to have blue bags to make visually clear that it is recycling.”
Ms. Howenstein also said that St. Andrew’s is “working with Bolana, a cleaning company, to make sure that cleaning crew is trained properly when sorting.”
Ms. Nevel said that because there has been a misconception among teachers and students that classroom recycling has been going on for the past few years, it’s taken a while for any changes to be made.
Reid Wincup said that because of the lack of awareness from the students, “people are used to throwing everything in the wrong bin.”
Ms. Nevel said that she found out that St. Andrew’s wasn’t recycling classroom trash when she watched the cleaning crew throw all the recycling in the regular trash. She then brought this concern to the Environmental Club.
Ms. Nevel said that recycling is just one way St. Andrew’s can help keep the school and environment clean.
“Recycling is the least we can do” and “because it’s not that hard to recycle, generally, it’s something everyone can do, it doesn’t take that much of our time and resources, so why not do it,” Ms. Nevel said.
Mr. Mark McKnight, the St. Andrew’s Chief Financial Officer, said that he has worked with Ms. Nevel, Head of Lower School Jordan Love, and Director of Operations Joe Phelan about improving recycling on campus.
Mr. Mcknight also stressed that the school’s environmental awareness is much bigger than recycling alone.
“There are a lot of other aspects of the school that students may not see, where we’re thinking about sustainability and environmental impact,” said Mr. Mcknight. Specifically, he mentioned working with SAGE to make lunch more environmentally friendly.
Remember: the blue recycling bins in classrooms are not trash and are not just for paper. They are used for all types of recycling so it is even easier to recycle. Now that the program has returned, it’s important that everyone makes an effort to recycle to help conserve materials and prevent pollution.
Photograph via The Salt Lake Tribune