Recycle Stations are Under Attack!

By the look of this photo, there are people out there tampering with our recycle stations all over campus. Doors have been pried open with crowbars and locks have been damaged. People have figured out that they can walk onto our campus during nighttime, reach their hands into the round hole, and steal the recycling money that belongs to Livermore High students.

Normally, clubs across campus take turns collecting the recycling, and use the profits for their activities. However, this year, there is only a small amount of those bottles and cans left in the bins to collect. There are 57 recycle stations across campus currently, and this money adds up. Fortunately, students from the Environmental Science class have been cleverly designing improvements to our recycle stations. These designs will hopefully to keep thieves away, but also promote more recycling across campus.

The easy response to theft and vandalism is anger, and vengefulness. However, the economy has probably forced people to do things they probably never thought they would have to do. So, instead of turning our recycle stations into armed fortresses, we have simply unlocked the doors. This will lead to less destruction of our stations, and will prompt students to empty the stations more frequently. A long term solution may include a place for compostable materials in our stations, as well as carefully designed security measures.

Printer cartridges Re-Used!

Thanks to the generous donations of staff and the public, LHS is able to keep printer cartridges out of our landfill. We re-use these cartridges by taking an empty to Cartridge World, and returning with a full cartridge. We also take these to OfficeMax, where teachers can get credits toward school supplies. In the current school funding environment, this is an important way to keep costs down, as well as doing the right thing: Re-use.

Rolling the dumpsters

This is a pic of students rolling one of the big white dumpsters out to School street so that Waste Management can haul it off to the recycle center. The plastic or aluminum has a value at the recyling center on Old First Street, who writes out a check. Within a week or so a check arrives in my box, which I hand over to the student club that hauled the recycled materials from the recycle stations to the dumpsters. Without students doing the work, none of this would happen. The check is usually between $110 and $180 dollars for the dumpster of plastic or aluminum. LHS recycles around twenty dumpster-loads a year. That is a large amount of material that will not go to the landfill. And, it is a huge quantity that our custodians do not have to carry around and deal with.

Stadium style Recycling Stations

We investigated styles of recycle stations to make it as easy as possible to separate recycle-able plastic and aluminum from material that will end up in the land fill. In the stadium, athletes are on the move and toss materials into cans from a distance. For this reason, a station was sought with clear instructions and two big openings. Our vendor, Midpoint, suggested using a design started by the Maryland football team. This way athletes can toss materials into clearly marked containers and shoot a basket at the same time.

Recharge-able battery project for LHS

Schools and citizens use a terrible number of dispose-able batteries. So that we do not add to the number of batteries being thrown into the landfill, or be recycled, LHS has started a program to use only recharge-able batteries. The hope is to no longer purchase or dispose of single use batteries. Instead we will own a comprehensive set of recharge-able batteries which will be distributed, then recharged as they run low on voltage. Stephen Bailey in Science is storing and re-charging the batteries. Another set of batteries has been placed in the digital camera lab int he Art department. Grant money from Altamont Education Advisory Board made this possible.

Students haul the recycle-ables

When we started this a few years ago, we just carried a few bags of plastic out back.

With education and increased recycle stations, we are now using electric trucks to haul the plastic.

LHS stadium gets 17 recycle stations!

The Altamont Education Advisory Board kindly provided grant money so that the Livermore High School Stadium could have a full set of recycling stations. This increases the flow of recycle-able materials to the recycle center, and decreases the amount of material going to the Altamont landfill. This is a good thing!

LHS students and staff bring in used glasses so the glasses can be re-used by others via the Lions Club.