In recent years, students have noticed recycling bins being absent in many classrooms. After school resumed from the COVID-19 break, the Conservation Club never started back up despite being over 90 years old. The school still does overall recycling monthly or bimonthly, according to former club advisor and science teacher Shawn McNamara.
“Unfortunately, the conservation club became one of those clubs people spent less and less time participating in,” McNamara said. “We have a lot of clubs here, so how much time can you really spend with five different clubs?”
After his daily science classes took over the club, it wasn’t a formal club anymore. They would pick up the bins from classrooms and recycle them.
While the Conservation Club isn’t currently active, South has countless other clubs. Not only would rechartering the club be beneficial, but the Conservation Club could transfer over their recycling duty to another club with similar interests.
“I know we have a Save the Lakes Club, so there could be a recycling arm of that group,” McNamara said. “Believe it or not, a lot of the plastics we don’t recycle end up in the lakes.”
According to McNamara, he is very open to the club coming back to South.
“I am happy to sponsor and support it again but it just needs some interest,” McNamara said. “I would love to have it come back.”
During the lengthy break from school, the ‘recycling bins,’ which were really cardboard boxes, got thrown away. According to McNamara, he collected boxes and gave them to teachers as they asked for them.
“They did a deep clean of the rooms and took them out of every classroom,” McNamara said. “Throughout the course of a couple of years, I accumulated those boxes.”
Along with Mr. McNamara, Assistant Principal Cynthia Parravano agrees it’s going to take the students to get the club up and running again.
“Clubs are completely student-run, so if there isn’t another group of students who come in and say ‘we want to recharter this club’, the club doesn’t run,” Parravano said. “It’s going to take the students to want to recharter the club, considering the work put into the job. I think we can certainly do our part, but it takes a lot of people to step up and do that.”
From a student’s perspective, Stevan Musicki ’23 would like to see recycling bins back in classrooms. According to Musicki, he thinks a lot of students would be interested in recycling.
“Honestly I could see people re-chartering the conservation club,” Musicki said. “So many people post about pollution and that stuff, so I feel like students would want to help.”