VHS Community Tackles Environmental Activism

ACT. Environmental activism has become a forefront across the globe. The VHS community tackles how to handle environmental issues in a small community. Photo courtesy of Chris Stone.

Over the years, VHS has been working toward new ways to reduce our environmental impact. With initiatives from the Green Team like the pig food bins, clothing drives, and the re-used caps and gowns for graduation, it is important to recognize that there is still work to be done.

Green Team President Rowan McBennett shared details on what students can be doing to reduce their impact on the environment.

“Be mindful of how much plastic you buy, how many cans you buy. Not owning a bunch of stuff,” McBennett said.

Food waste is an ongoing issue at the high school. Many students feel like they don’t have enough time to eat given the long lines.

“The biggest thing, in one word, I’d say is wasting … I’d way rather have kids eat in class and clean up after themselves than wasting food,” explained McBennett.

Meanwhile, littering is also a large issue at VHS.

“I think littering is a big issue … it sucks that classes have to clean up after each other,” senior Elliott Caughell said.

Other students share the same sentiment.

“As someone who works in food service, the similarities I see between the food waste at my job and at our school is alarmingly similar, and I think it’s particularly wasteful when students are required to get something from the salad bar and they have to throw it away because they don’t eat it” said senior Katie Deloach.

Littering at the high school has been an on-going issue for years. With lunch trays and food left out, among accidental trash that doesn’t make it to the trash or recycling bins, issues such as environmental pollution or harm to wildlife is an ever-changing problem, and it’s important for students to do their part in our community.

“The biggest thing students could do to help [facilities] would be to make sure things go into the right bins. If you don’t know [the correct one], feel free to ask someone,” McBennett said.

The idea of getting a whole community to follow through with these plans is daunting, but starting small is always much easier than trying to tackle the problem all at once.

“[Finland] is really ahead of the times with a lot of environmental things, and it’s because they’re a small country, and they have fewer people to influence. … When you have fewer people, it makes it easier to get the word across,” McBennett explained. “If every student is made aware of things and every student is on the same page, we can get really far really fast,” McBennett added.

There are multiple things that the Green Team is doing to help prevent climate change, many of which are established such as the cap and gown rental or the clothing drives they’ve done in the spring, but some are still ongoing.

“We’re working on purchasing vending machines—currently all of our vending machines are from Coca-Cola, which is all plastic waste, so we’d really like to get vending machines that are only aluminum or glass,” VHS teacher and Green Team advisor Christopher Stone said.

There is still a lot of work to do at the school, and it is important for the entire student body to do their part in protecting our local environment. Whether it’s at home or at school, making small steps to ensure the cleanliness of our natural environment is an incredibly important step for our community to take.