Recycling, the act of converting waste into a reusable material. Carlisle High School is no exception in the realm of recycling and moving towards a greener future. The green containers that are displayed in every classroom hold the efforts for a greener future for the school which have been taking place since 2006 when Director of Facilities, Tom Horton, came in 2005 to the position.

“Pretty much everything we do is geared toward going greener and doing things the environmental stewardship,” Horton said, adding, “As far as technology will allow us to go, as things get greener we’re always looking at the new products that come out and if there’s any programs that we can benefit financially from going greener, we certainly do those as well as trying to get everyone to buy into it as well.”

The problem with the school isn’t that there is not opportunities to recycle; it is that students don’t seem to realize the importance of recycling and not just throwing recyclables in the trash or vice versa.

“For this year, I’ve been saying I don’t understand why our students, this generation, hasn’t gotten it in terms of inherently understanding the importance of recycling and following through with that,” Bruce Rowland, Geoenvironmental teacher in Swartz, said.

The key may be changing habits.

“The biggest thing is that any program whether it’s energy savings or recycling or any type of environmental way to be better stewards is it’s hard to change the culture of people,” said Horton. “Because it’s a nuisance to have to walk over there and throw away something in that certain little bin and that kind of thing so changing the culture is probably the biggest challenge of recycling and the mechanics of it.”

“But having people do it and having it picked up that’s the easy stuff; the hard part is getting the culture changed,” Horton added. 

While  some students ignore the green containers and don’t recycle, others do.

“I recycle at school when there are bins around,” said Sami Jumper, senior. “It doesn’t really make sense to not recycle if you’re given the option. It doesn’t take any more effort to put something in a recycling bin rather than a trash bin.” 

The only way to get people to recycle is to keep telling people and to get the message out on why it is important to do so.

“If you recycle one thing, the reality is it doesn’t matter but if we all recycle one thing, the reality is it does matter. So if we all do our part, we can make a difference,” said Rowland.