Every day, students leave behind lunch-line pizza boxes, dirty napkins and crumpled-up wrappers throughout the school campus, unbothered if it gets left behind to hurt the environment. The U.S. as a whole accumulates 14,500 tons of solid waste daily, which greatly impacts the global waste crisis.
Physical Education teacher Todd Van Peursem (VP) emphasized the importance of leaving spaces better than you found them.
“There’s trash all over the place at this school, and it has been that way for [my] last 18 years of working here,” VP said.
The school’s maintenance crew works tirelessly from 3 p.m. to midnight yet some students fail to acknowledge this by continuously leaving their garbage out, thus adding to the janitors’ already arduous workload.
“[The janitors had a] look of helplessness or even disgust when [they] realized how easy it was for [students] to clean up after themselves, but [instead] they left [their trash] there for a reason,” VP said.
It is shocking that students from such a high-achieving school do not realize that leaving trash around is inconsiderate of others and the community. Additionally, not cleaning up the trash and walking past shows others that you do not think it is a priority to keep campus clean; and attitude that can be contagious. VP encourages students to clean up any trash they see and leads by example with daily reminders to respect the environment.
“There are more important things for our maintenance crews and our custodial staff to be doing than picking up after children that are capable of doing it themselves,” VP said.
Corin Greenberg, Redwood history teacher of 15 years, reflected on her experience hosting leadership and five separate clubs in her classroom as a good experience for students. However, if club members don’t keep her class clean, then students after lunch would deal with another person’s water spills and crumbs.
“[If] you’re using my room, that’s great, [there’s] just one expectation, [which] is that you clean up after yourself,” Greenberg said.
The sports fields, tennis courts and track can also be found littered with food scraps, wrappers or even water bottles. Few people know that janitors are not responsible for taking care of trash in these further-away spaces, so coaches and team captains typically enforce that athletes take care of their own mess, however this is not always reliable.
Coaches shouldn’t have to beg their athletes to throw away wrappers or sports drinks after practice, it should be a given. Teachers, who generously share their room with students, shouldn’t be left with crumbs or water spills to clean. Additionally, janitors, who already have so much work, should not have to go out of their way to clean up wrappers and food scraps carelessly left around.
“I hope that students leave places cleaner than they found them but I’ve been hoping that for 18 years, and it’s pretty embarrassing at this point [considering they don’t],” VP said.
Even just one piece of garbage can add to a janitor’s workload, frustrate a sports coach, distract a busy teacher and harm the environment. Furthermore, it creates a bad example for other students and a cycle of negligence.
It is a common misconception that janitors are meant to clean up after students, or that it is alright to leave scraps behind because someone will eventually come by. Students need to start thinking twice about their decisions to leave trash behind because not changing their messy habits is the same as actively choosing to make someone else’s life harder.
Principal Dr. Barnaby Payne expresses his concerns considering the trash on campus and aims for a better approach to make Redwood more sustainable.
“If I were living the dream, we would all be highly skilled at recycling, and able to organize our [school’s] recycling beyond what we even do at home,” Dr. Payne said.
At Redwood, countless efforts have been made to address the waste policy and promote recycling within classrooms and beyond in the world. However, more students need to realize the importance personal responsibility has in maintaining campus cleanliness because it isn’t the staff’s job to pick up their trash.
