How can such trouble come from one Coca Cola bottle?
Taylor is my 18-year-old not so little brother who is a senior at Murray High School. He is 6’ 3” and is always there to grab me a bowl off the top shelf. I always tell my mom that I swear my brother and I are not related because of the few things we have in common. Taylor is such a knowledgeable young adult and always seems to beat me in arguments but mostly Monopoly. Not saying that I have a lack of know how but Taylor is such an intelligent person and sometimes I have to ask my self how he even knows the things he does. Since he is such sophisticated and mature kid I decided to interview him on what he thinks of recycling and trash removal at the high school he attends.
“ Kids in high school just really don’t care about recycling.” Taylor said. “I mean there could be some that would go the extra mile and recycle items but for the most part most kids don’t care if a plastic bottle ends up in the garbage or recycling.” he said. You don’t think teens would save up plastic bottles or soda cans if it meant getting a few extra bucks?” I asked him. He continued to tell me about the amounts of trash that he finds in the hallways and in the parking lot of the school. “If the kids cant even get the trash in the garbage can how are we even going to get them to recycle in general?” Taylor said with a small chuckle. “You have a really good point.” I said, “but how many kids do you think are responsible for the littering through out the campus of the high school? I began to ask. “ Do you really think that it’s every single kid?” “No,” Taylor began to say. The kids that are choosing to litter in the hallways at school can’t be a huge group of kids I began to tell him, so correcting even the smallest habits wont be that difficult. If even half of the kids that decided to get a soda at lunch or through out the day recycled their bottle we would have great improvement. “If I got a dollar for every Mc Donald’s bag I saw on the floor of the high school or in the parking lot id have a good $150 by the end of the week.” Taylor said. “I honestly feel like its more effort to litter somewhere through out the high school instead of putting it in the garbage can because they’re placed so conveniently through out the school.” Taylor said with some sarcasm.
Working in an elementary school I know that schools are very smart with their use of paper and especially recycling paper. Kids are taught in elementary to recycle and it is continually drilled in their head through out the years they are there I began to tell him. “I remember learning to recycle in elementary, but I don’t remember having a recycling bin anywhere for plastic or cans” Taylor began to tell me. Just imagine if throwing a plastic bottle or a can in the recycling bin were as common as recycling paper, imagine how much more we would be recycling, and we would end up being quite the energy saving people. “I think its because not everyone is aware about how much plastic actually goes to waste, and the effects that come from it” he stated. “Everyone knows to recycle paper because it was drilled in our head at such a young age” he continued to say, “but for the most part kids will throw away a soda can or even a bottle because they either don’t have a recycling bin to put it in or they don’t know other wise and they just throw it away” he stated. I began to tell him that if you were to watch what people throw away you’d be surprised at how much of our common items are being thrown away that could easily be recycled.
“What really bugs me the most is when I see a piece of garbage on the ground and a garbage can is literally ten steps away,” he said. He brought up a really good point when he said that because most of the time that’s what it comes down to is people making that extra effort to throw garbage away and recyclables in the right can. I just don’t understand why people can’t throw their own trash away. It would make for such a better, cleaner environment and we wouldn’t end up with trash in the lakes or oceans that actually harm the animals. If everyone were to take care of his or her selves we wouldn’t be cleaning up after everyone