Every year, April Jones, AP environmental science teacher at Athens, gives her class one small task: collecting all the trash they generate for 24 hours. The assignment was part of a lesson on what can be recycled, but overall, it’s not exactly a mind-blowing experience until I decided to continue to collect my trash for the whole week. This opened my eyes to how we as people, don’t even see how wasteful we are.
When Jones passed out plastic bags and told us to collect all of our personal trash, I didn’t even spare a thought for it. But when I got home that day, I no longer wanted an after-school snack because I’d have to throw my wrapper away. I didn’t want to walk into school with a bag full of garbage. I was convinced that when I went to school the next morning, I would have maybe one or two things in my bag. I was right, the next morning I did have only one or two things in my bag, but only because I had already thrown away my single-use plastic salad bowl, my mini bag of chips, and all the other bits of garbage I used the day before. I had mindlessly thrown them away before I could collect them — I hadn’t even realized.
It took me three days to finally get myself together and collect all my trash for 24 hours. With every little piece of plastic I would collect, I would turn it over and look for the little green triangle that said it could be recycled. I was so against having things in my mini trash bag that I was reusing and recycling everything I could. I knew if I didn’t, and threw away my trash like normal, my bag would probably be full.
When I turned in my bag on Thursday, I had barely turned in much garbage. For the majority of my waste, I had either recycled or found another use for it, like my to-go bag from my job that I tucked into my bag-of-bags for future use, instead of immediately tossing it. I had become a model citizen of reduce, reuse, recycle for exactly 24 hours, and was ready to forget the whole thing and go back to thoughtlessly throwing away trash like everyone else. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that maybe Jones’ “little assignment” had made its impact on me.
I decided that I was going to collect my trash for the rest of the week, to see if holding myself accountable to save the garbage I produced would change how I viewed throwing things away.
By the end of my second day of collecting garbage, I only had a few pieces. If I had just thrown everything away, I would have had a near full bag. But that was not the thing that stood out to me the most; what did was the amount of garbage people throw away that could be recycled.
Walking around school, I see trash bins everywhere, but a recycling bin? Not even in all the classrooms. I would have to hold onto my soda can for upwards to an hour until I found a small, green bin. After school, I continued to see this problem: trash cans are everywhere, but recycling not so much. This made it much harder to not just give in and throw away my cans and bottles out of convenience.
By day three of my self-named “trash week,” it had become much easier for me to differentiate what went in the trash, and what could be recycled or reused; but the same can’t be said for my peers.
Most teenagers don’t think about what they’re throwing away — I would know, because I sure didn’t. When I’m at home, and recycling is right in front of me, it’s easy to pick the right bin, but at school? Whatever bin is closer.
Athens is lucky to have a recycling club that picks up the green bins around the school once a week, but on their routes around the school, they have to walk past the large trash bins that are more than half full of recyclables, simply because people couldn’t be bothered to spare 10 seconds to recycle. Adding on, if items are recycled that shouldn’t be, the whole bin ends up getting tossed out. So much waste is generated by our school, due to misinformation, or downright laziness.
Trash week taught me how wasteful I am in just a day, but it also taught me how much of the waste I produce doesn’t have to be trash. I could cut my waste in half, even by 75%, just by taking a second to recycle or reuse. I encourage others to partake in collecting their garbage for a day, to take a small step in keeping waste out of our landfills, and keep the grass a little greener.
