By Jesse Dolojan—
You look out your car window, and you see tons of cars stuck in traffic. Honking fills the air, annoying you to no end. You look to your right to see your friend lower his window to throw his empty water bottle out the window. You hear a soft splash as it lands in the river beside you. Everything you have just witnessed has brought the Earth closer and closer to its death.
About this time last year, Charlie Neill and Reid Norton, seniors, started to talk about how students can make an organized effort to have a positive impact on the environment. They decided to approach Mr. John Ausema, science teacher, about it, sharing their desire to restart the Eagles for the Environment club that ended a long time ago.
“Environmental efforts are spearheaded by teachers … students have an interest in that, but it’s kind of always been more teacher organized,” Neill said, Eagles for the Environment leader and co-founder. “Certain things are like, why don’t we start something that harnesses that interest, and it just makes it more student-oriented?”
The club is working to establish a composting center with the support of a composting company.
“We convinced the school to hire this company called Veteran Compost… [t]hey will provide us with these bins, and then a pretty big 14 gallons for the McKenna center she has to come up with all food scraps,” Neill said. “So that’s kind of what we’re where we’re at right now but we’re gonna expand that to the cafeteria.”
Future plans can include tours of the solar panels and switching the utensils from plastic to more eco-friendly materials. This club is very young, and it has a lot of potentials to have a great future and a positive impact on the community and the world.
“I feel like lifestyle choices are the hardest thing,” Norton said. “I know last year I used so many plastic water bottles. I was at five empty water bottles in my room [each day] … now my family and I just don’t buy them anymore.”
The leaders recognize how hard it is to make these little changes in our lives, but they recognize that this is what the world needs.
“It’s difficult to get involved, but it’s rewarding because it’s so difficult. And with things like composting and solar panels in the business kind of a unique experience that you can join in on,” said Neill. “So I would say, get excited about things like this, because this is really cool, [a]nd you have the chance to to get involved in.”
Leslie Keiser • Mar 12, 2021 at 10:56 am
Such good news and so needed. Thanks for bringing this to everyone’s attention.
Carol Corgan • Mar 12, 2021 at 10:33 am
Bravo! I’m excited that Gonzaga and McKenna Center are composting. My husband and I compost at home.