Cameron Penney
At Fort High, students constantly are reminded to “be the change.”
But they’ll have to work harder if they want that change to have an environmental impact.
“As a caretaking staff, we have noticed students have been putting garbage in [the recycling bins], not just plastic bottles,” noted FFHS head caretaker Greg Scott.
“We’ve basically had to throw out the whole bag instead of recycling what is there,” he said.
Fort High is working towards improving its recycling program in an effort spearheaded by the Student Leadership Council.
“Currently, we having a recycling program in place and we recycle paper products,” noted FFHS principal Peg Keffer, citing paper, cardboard, and shredding as examples.
“We are working towards consistently recycling juice bottles and pop cans,” she added.
“Along with the possibility of creating some kind of composting system, this is being worked on through Student Leadership Council.”
“There will be better signage to ensure proper disposal of recyclables,” vowed SLC member Kate Parsons.
“I had no clue the recycling was being thrown away,” she admitted.
“It makes me feel like I’m doing wrong to the environment.”
The caretaking staff also is making strides towards improving the recycling program within the school.
“We’ve put a garbage can right beside the recycling bins, and that should help the students see the difference so that they can help us in the recycling program that we have at the high school,” said Scott.
“The blue recycling bins are for plastic bottles only,” he stressed.
“In the classroom, we have recycling boxes and in there, that’s supposed to also be for plastics,” he added.
“The paper can be brought down to the cardboard recycling bin by our garbage on the west side of the school.”
“We do have containers for paper in all the departments,” Scott noted.
“So if students would do diligence and help out with that, that would really help that program move ahead.”
“As the local ICI [Industrial Commercial Institutional] community has no collection service for blue box materials, the town should investigate the feasibility of offering this service to them,” states the Town of Fort Frances’ “Recycling Strategy—Final Report” from December, 2010.
At the time, a recommendation was made to “assess the feasibility of providing a collection service for blue box recyclables to the town’s ICI sector.”
A suggestion also was made to “include the feasibility of funding the service as a utility in the assessment.”
But nothing has changed since then.
“We’re still trying to push it,” said Doug Brown, manager of the Operations and Facilities Division.
“There’s no funding at the moment,” he added. “Only for residential blue box recycling.”
The cardboard recycling at Fort High is collected by Robinson’s while the rest goes to waste.
Recycling programs have been in area high schools for several years.
Both FFHS and Beaver Brae (Kenora) has had their program for 10 years while Rainy River High School estimates theirs has been around between five and 10 years.
Atikokan High School has had a recycling program for at least 12 years while Dryden High School has run the program for at least six years.
Beaver Brae principal Clinton Bruetsch said his school has not had similar issues with students putting garbage in the recycling bins.
Not so at RRHS, according to principal Jim Chorney.
“Every once and a while something like [garbage in the recycling bin] happens,” he noted.
“Sometimes they don’t know what items are recyclable,” he reasoned.
“It’s not a huge problem.”
“We did [have trouble] at first,” echoed DHS principal Kathy McConnachie, attributing the issue to growing pains that new programs experience.
“They need to know what is recyclable and what isn’t,” she stressed.
“Now that we have recycled this long, the students have become more conscientious.”
At the moment, Fort High, RRHS, DHS, and Beaver Brae do not offer a composting service.
Bruetsch said Beaver Brae occasionally uses composting as an activity in its science classrooms.
“We compost all materials from our family studies and food preparation courses, plus other composting,” noted AHS principal Ian Simpson.
“We have had composting in the past, such as compost bins in each classroom,” said McConnachie of DHS, though she added the program is not running this year.
“You have to have teacher champions to run these programs,” she stressed.
Some schools, such as Fort High and DHS, offer an “Environmental Science” class.
The class at DHS is in charge of the recycling program there.
“It allows for experiential learning and has worked very well,” McConnachie enthused.
DHS also has an environmental club, and is certified as a silver-level “Ecoschool.”
The “Ecoschool” program assesses “achievement of environmentally-responsible actions and learning.”
Its criteria includes teamwork and leadership, energy conservation, waste minimization, school ground greening, curriculum, and environmental stewardship.
At Fort High, improving the recycling program may seem like a monumental task. But the little things can help in big ways.
“When students see garbage on the floor, instead of walking by, pick it up and put it in the appropriate place,” Scott suggested.
