Ocracoke honors students start recycling project
By SUNDAE HORN
Five
freshmen from Ocracoke School are working together to learn about the
benefits of recycling. The project is a joint effort between the
students and two teachers, Jennifer Garrish and Charles Temple. Joe
Chestnut, Chase Garrish and Maddie Payne are working on research papers
for their Honors English class, while Chante Mason and Mike Vankovich
are doing the research for their honors earth science class.
High school English teacher Charles Temple started a school-wide recycling program at the beginning of the academic year.
“One day I noticed that the dumpster was piled high with
cardboard,” he said. “I was surprised that nobody had
started recycling at the school, and I was equally surprised that I was
the one who wanted to do it.”
Temple received $60 from the PTA to purchase trash cans to hold the recyclables.
“It was such a simple thing. I wasn’t undertaking any
heroic measures,” Temple said. “But now we’re
recycling plastic milk containers, plus glass, aluminum, and
cardboard.”
Senior Luke Wrobleski takes the recyclables to the dump every day
during his class time as assistant to physical education teacher Adam
Burleson. “Luke enjoys being useful, and he’s been a big
help,” Temple said.
“When I started this, [high school science teacher] Jennifer
Garrish and I discussed it as an opportunity to get the ninth-grade
honors students to participate and turn it into an honors
project,” he said.
Temple explained that the honors program requires teachers to provide
“more rigorous and more varied” educational opportunities.
For his honors English class, the students will write a research paper
about the project. Temple sees this as a way for them to learn about
research techniques and also as a way “to connect writing to your
activity in real life.”
For the honors science class, the students will research recycling and
educate the community on their findings. Garrish expects the students
to attend a Solid Waste Advisory Committee meeting and interview one of
the participants. Finding out exactly what can be recycled on Ocracoke
and why it should be recycled – and sharing that information --
will be a big part of the project.
The students have already been helping with some hands-on aspects of
the job by rinsing and sorting the school’s recyclables. They all
have a request for their fellow students, “Rinse out your
bottles!”
“Sour milk is disgusting,” said Joe Chestnut, speaking for
the group as they all nodded and shuddered in memory. Then he added,
“One thing we’ve learned is that you can recycle.
It’s the most efficient way to get rid of household trash.”
The students all chimed in with facts and statistics: “Aluminum
is the most efficient.” “Aluminum and glass can be recycled
indefinitely.” “Most of what we throw away is paper
products.” “80 percent of energy is saved by
recycling.”
“Mostly we’ve been researching about recycling in
general,” said Chase Garrish, “but we’re going to
learn more about recycling on Ocracoke.”
