Arcata High School’s Go Green Club started a student-driven recycling initiative on campus. After years of not recycling, Arcata High is beginning to properly dispose of its multitudes of recyclable goods.

Since the shutdown of the old recycling facility, Arcata High’s recycling bins have sat like decorations on campus. Because the school was already using Recology to pick up their trash and paying for them to pick up recycling too, even though they never actually used this service, the Go Green representatives and volunteers only had to begin putting the filled recycling bins out with the trash. Recology now is the pick-up for both trash and recycling on campus.

Since it is purely student-driven, students around campus are responsible for recycling their waste in the recycling bins in classrooms and around campus. The bins in classrooms should be emptied into the big bins at the end of the hallways by student volunteers, not teachers.

“We needed it to be student-driven because we couldn’t put any more work on the janitors or the teachers,” the president of Go Green, Carolyn Van Mantgem, said.

Recycling has been an ongoing project for Go Green since the beginning of the 2022-23 school year, even though it is only just beginning this school year. Obstacles such as identifying why there was no recycling on campus and how the club could begin recycling are some of the factors that Van Mantgem said caused the delay. Organizing such a large, student-driven initiative was difficult for the Go Green club, however, they were driven because they believe it is important that Arcata High students are “taking care of the land they inhabit” Van Mantgem said.

The perseverance of Go Green students proved successful so far as President Van Mantgem announced. Since September 30th, twenty-seven large bins on campus have been recycled and only one bin has been contaminated. The only obstacle Go Green and the Arcata High recycling initiative face now is “making sure people stick with it.”