The Green Team took the initiative to sort trash and recycling bins so that more materiel can properly recycled

One of the first steps that a school can take to being more environmentally friendly is to recycle. While Potomac Falls has recycling bins in every classroom and a dumpster intended for recyclable material, most of the school’s waste does not get recycled due to trash being thrown into recycling bins. If the bins are not properly sorted, nothing can be recycled. The Green Team is a club that has been brought back to life with solving this problem in mind.

Founders Alexandra Batchvarova, George Ardura, and John Le came together with one main goal: to make Potomac Falls more environmentally friendly. With the help of sponsor Nicholas Puszert, they created a club that would be able to address this concern. The main issue they noticed was the recycling problem; very little material was being recycled, even though the school has the resources to do so. To combat this, the Green Team took on the project of sorting all the trash and recycling so that material gets where it needs to go.

“Every Thursday after school we get together, and we go around the entire school. We go through recycling bins, and if there’s any trash in there, we put it in the trash bin so the recycling bin is purely recycling. We collect it all and recycle it because without that, everything is just thrown in the trash instead of being recycled,” said Ardura.

While this recycling project is the main objective of Green Team at the moment, the club’s goal is to expand their efforts and bring more positive change to the school and community. They have plans to start putting up posters reminding students to start recycling and informing them on what materials can be recycled.

“Our main goal is to get a culture of the kids here to recycle – to be conscious of what they’re throwing in the bins, rather than just throwing everything into the garbage,” said Puszert.

As far as community outreach, the Green Team has plans for trash cleanup and other projects intended to reach a wider range than just Potomac Falls. By making their presence known in the community, they hope to encourage elementary schoolers and middle schools to make an effort to recycle and adopt environmentally friendly practices.

Although there are many ways to help the environment, the Green Team felt they could make the biggest impact by being more conscientious of recycling practices at Potomac Falls.

“We as a group decided that this was our time to stand up and begin recycling because there’s so much potential at this school to make an environmental impact, just because of the scale of how big the school is and how much recyclable material we go through,” said Ardura.