As the school moves further into the 21st century, social studies teacher Roger Grande stresses the dangers in over-consumption of paper at the school.
Paper use is one of the most significant contributors to destroying the environment, according to Grande.
Grande believes that the most effective way to tackle the school’s overall carbon footprint would be confronting its paper consumption.
“Taking all those trees out of the ground has a mass carbon dioxide release, and when you burn rather than recycle paper, there is another big methane release.”
According to Grande, the school used close to 5 million sheets of paper last year.
Students like senior Joyce Liu are taking action to reduce this consumption. She is an active member of the Environmental Club and believes that awareness is key.
“We definitely have stuff that can be commemorated, like Toter Tuesdays,” said Liu. “But I think that people need to be more informed.”
The copy center has taken its own green initiatives, according to career and technology education teacher Paul Priestly, head of the copy center.
“We recycle constantly, and we are encouraging people to use online data readings as opposed to doing paper copies,” said Priestly. “I would like to see us moving away from paper usage and using more online services.”
Priestly was happy to say that he has seen a decrease in paper consumption at the copy center due to teachers posting documents online, a process which began a few years ago.
“We started being able to do PDFs online for the teachers,” said Priestly. “I do that much more frequently now versus the last few years.”
Priestly also mentioned environmentally-friendly ways for students and teachers to create advertisements.
“As opposed to printing out flyers, doing email blasts to people would be a great way to advertise events” said Priestly.
Despite the progress made, Grande still feels that it is an uphill battle for the school to significantly improve its paper consumption.
“It’s a big institution. There are a lot of competing demands,” said Grande. “Things are not going to seriously happen until the administration says this is a priority.”
Grande believes that improving the school’s environmental treatment is of the utmost importance in terms of preparing students for the future.
“As a social studies teacher, my job is to prepare students for the 21st century challenges,” said Grande. “Students are going to face this in their lives as adults, whether we like it or not.”
Juvan Bonni can be contacted at [email protected].
