There are high school clubs that have a main goal of caring for the environment, but one club in particular has started up at DHS, and it has separated itself from the rest of the pack: the Go Green Club.
“We want to promote the idea of having more recycling right now at Dow High,” junior Jack Brewster said.
Presently, the Go Green Club is working with Student Council to collect any unopened and unwanted packaged food items into bins on a sharing cart. Some examples of items they are collecting are chips, granola bars, and just any multitude of snacks and packaged products. This sharing cart is in the center of the cafeteria near the checkout lines for hot lunches.
“We’re allowing perishable food items for students who are hungry during lunch,” junior Jacqueline Laurin said. “We want to reduce waste and provide more food to people who want it.”
Alongside that, there is also a fruit basket, which is special in this case, as many clubs of this nature are not interested in donating fruit to reduce excess food. However, cutting down on uneaten fruit appears to be an important issue for them.
“All the students in Go Green Club agreed that fruit was an item that was discarded far too much,” special education teacher and Go Green Club advisor Cynthia Roberts said. “Part of it was that if you buy a lunch, you must take a fruit with it. Many of the members noticed that people went right to go throw it out immediately after they took it. We consulted the cafeteria staff about this, and the staff agreed that they saw too much fruit being trashed.”
They are not only are they trying to reducing unconsumed food, but they are trying to reduce waste in general throughout the school.
“We’re adding more recycling bins because garbage bins are more convenient, so more recycling bins will get more recycling,” Laurin said. “People want to recycle but they just see garbage bins, so they put their recycling in the trash. But we want to put more recycling bins in the hallways with signs pointing to them to raise awareness and let people know they can recycle, and it will be more convenient.”
Another one of the ways they are reducing waste is through the free school supplies system in the Charger Closet near the little theatre.
“People donate and take from in the media center, because at the end of the year people have notebooks and many extra supplies that they don’t need and they typically trash it, so we want to save it this year instead,” Roberts said.
They are also starting up an initiative in which they are accepting previously used graduation caps and gowns for future graduates.
“Why shouldn’t we have a closet full of old graduation gowns and uniforms for seniors to wear?” Roberts said. “It’s one less expense for the seniors, and less waste for the gowns.”
Overall, the Go Green club is trying to do good for the community by helping limit what people throw away and increasing recycling to help the environment at large.
“Our mission statement is to reduce waste in the school,” Brewster said. “It goes back to the idea of saving as much as possible, from saving food and graduation gowns to school supplies and allowing more recycling to save as much as possible. It would definitely save money for everyone. We just want to reduce waste overall and just help the school to recycle more and do better about what we waste, and try reducing waste as much as possible.”
