By Madie Blais
Staff Writer
About 22,000 people live in Westford, each of which produce an average of half a ton of waste a year. We, in the town of Westford, pay $73 per ton of trash, according to George Drew of Covanta, Haverhill. That’s 11,000 tons and $803,000!
The Environmental Club’s most recent project is working to lower this amount of waste and money, by making people environmentally conscious and introducing a new food composting system to Westford School cafeterias. Having very ambitious goals, they have worked hard to start small and work their way up, hoping to cause a domino effect.
“We’ve scaled back more ambitious plans to focus on more education and utilizing what we have in the building right now that’s not being used” said Chris Connole, one of the advisors of the Environmental Club.
Club Advisors, Rebecca Ingerslev and Chris Connole, and club members seem very enthusiastic about the recent challenges they’ve taken on. Spreading the word about what you can and cannot recycle and trying to get students, teachers, and staff to participate and make use of what is available is going to be quite the challenge. Their hope is that if they educate people and make them realize how important it is and what a great difference it can make that all people will take the initiative.
Recycling is one of the easiest, best ways one can help their environment. By simply recycling one can preserve natural resources, lower the amount of energy needed in creating new products, help reduce pollution and save a bunch of money as well.
“The amount of trash we are producing in a scale in this building is tremendous and all this trash we produce costs money, so to take all of this away is possibly a lot of money” said Connole.
By recycling products, the school will get reimbursed and may not even have to pay for trash removal in the first place, according to Mr. Connole.
Everyone in the club seemed to be convinced that everyone doesn’t know how much can be recycled. So even if people are recycling, there are probably just as may products they are throwing away that can be recycled as well.
What Can I Recycle?
http://www.wm.com/thinkgreen/what-can-i-recycle.jsp
List of What Can Be Recycled
http://www.buffalo.edu/recycling/recyclable.html
Tips On Recycling
http://greenkidsnow.org/Tips.html
