Sustainable development at Sutherland High School
Protection of the environment is not always a priority at Sutherland High School, and many students unconsciously waste a lot more than an average French student during their everyday routine. Indeed, there is no canteen in their school, as in ours. They can either bring a packed lunch to eat at school, or buy their meals at the cafeteria,- where the food is usually very fat. Each meal is directly served on a styrofoam tray, which is neither recyclable nor biodegradable, but most importantly, it is very cheap : only three cents a tray. The administration may aim to save money by using these polluting trays, rather than recyclable ones, at seven cents each. The problem is that now 35 000 of these are sold each month in the city's schools, creating a massive quantity of garbage each day.
At the Project Earth club at Sutherland High, a group of students now meet every other Monday to discuss solutions to environmental issues in their school. This week, they looked for reusable trays, plates, silverware and a dishwasher, as we have in our school in France. They are conscious of the investment this would represent, and are trying to calculate the time it would take for it to be profitable. Students also eat their lunch with plastic silverware, and cardboard plates that they throw away when they are done eating. Once again, this problem raises the question of sustainable development in high school.
This problem can also be found in selective sorting in the entire school. In the classrooms, different bins are provided for recyclable and non recyclable rubbish : a black one for random rubbish and a blue one with the recycling logo on it. Unfortunately, according to my host student, Alissa, who is also a member of the Project Earth club, many students do not make the difference, because they have never been taught how to do them. So, they throw everything away in the same bin. And even if they did select their rubbish, the situation would not be any different because the caretaker throws everything into the same plastic bag at the end of the day. However, although the solution of a cafeteria increases the issue of obesity, it helps reduce the quantity of food wasted every day.
Written by Yuna Le Duff