Bath County students start recycling program

Hot Springs, Va. –

The Leadership Class of Bath County High School is creating a recycling program for the school. This is the class’ first project of the school year and they are starting the program from scratch.

“This is our first year in the Leadership Class and our teacher, Ms. Lee, it’s her first year teaching the Leadership class,” says Jordan Ford. “So jumping into a large project, like this recycling project, is really hard on the students and it’s a good learning process. We’re in the stages of getting donations for the bins from local businesses. We’ll get bins from all of our sponsors. They will be ordered, the business logos will be on all the bins and they will be placed throughout the school.”

Monica is an exchange student from China.

“Recycling project is very famous in China,” says Monica. “I think that it’s very, very good for our environment. There is some teachers here, they are doing recycling project by themselves.”

“We are just are trying to find sponsors for recycling bins for batteries, paper, cans,” says Kara Kincaid. “We want to be able to put one beside each vending machine in the school and battery recycling containers in the teacher work rooms and printer cartridges in the work room and some teacher’s rooms.”

“I think it was a really good program to start us out on and it will be good for our school to participate in this kind of thing,” says Meghan Brown. “It should start as soon as we get all the advertising out and the bins placed in the school.”

“I think it’s just going to help out the school as far as keeping waste out of the floors, kind of gives us a sort of respectful mindset towards our school,” says Ethan Wrights. “They get their name on the bin and it just promotes the business, to where it’s seen every day.”

“It will be good when we recycle our stuff and get it rid of for the environment.” says Rachael. “We’ve handed over the project to the Beta Club and they’re going to continue running the project after we get everything set up and ready. We’re calling people. We’re sending out flyers, we had posters made to tell people the information about the project.”

“I think it will benefit real well, because a lot of people throw bottles and papers and papers are always around everywhere,” says Gaje Thomas. “In some cases I don’t, because I think it’s going to be a lot of work that we might not be able to do. We are going to be emptying them, like helping them out, but the Beta Club is going to be doing it.”

“I think it’s a very good idea,” says Ashley Wright. “It helps us as students give back to the community. It is very hard to start a project in a full scale, do this, do that, it is very hard. Once we get the bins we will then place them around the school with a whole bunch of other businesses logos. And we’re not only helping ourselves, but we’re also helping other businesses too.”

Teacher Bonnie Lee says her students are getting hands on experience out of this project.

“A lot of understanding about how much work it takes to do a project,” says Lee. “They’ve learned to talk to businesses. It’s hard to ask for funds and so they’re getting up courage to call businesses and ask for assistance, learning how to talk to people, learning how to write articles, learning how to talk on the radio. This recycling project, we’re doing it as a school wide initiative. The leadership class is doing the initial program, but it’s being followed on year to year by the Beta Club. The Beta Club will be taking the recycling out to the recycling bins and making sure it continues every year.”

For more information about the Bath County High School recycling program, call the school at 839-2431.