Recycling practices at OH have shifted noticeably over the past several years, with the school moving towards a paper-only system. While OH previously maintained multiple bins for a variety of recyclables, staff members say those options have been removed for different reasons surrounding cost and labor limitations.
“To my understanding, we do just recycle paper,” said AP Environmental Science teacher and Environmental Action Club (EAC) sponsor Zachary Horn. “A few years ago, we had other bins for plastic and aluminum as well, but my understanding is that those were removed due to mainly labor and budget issues, we didn’t have enough people to collect both bins, so we had to streamline.”
As the number of materials accepted in the school’s bins has narrowed, questions emerged about whether the change was related to district-wide budget adjustments. A Freedom of Information Act request filed helped to determine which waste company the district contracts with and what the recycling program costs.
According to invoices from the current school year (’25-26), the district was billed at every building for trash and recycling. Every building averaged a recycling pickup rate of about two times per week with some extra 96 gallon bins listed as “on call.”
The Waste Management invoices indicate that SD308 pays out thousands of dollars for recycling each month. According to a representative from the company, even though Waste Management will collect general “loose (not bagged) recyclables,” the process might vary from building to building.
According to an email from Science teacher Pamela Phelps sent out to all OH staff members on Sept. 3 of this year (pictured below), it’s left up to teachers if they want to communicate the recycling rules to students in regards to what is actually recycled and what should be put in the blue bin.
The other recycling bins for plastics and aluminums were removed over the past few years, so from a staff perspective they understand that only paper is actually being recycled and can properly communicate the changes to students. However, here at OH this email states that OH only wants to recycle paper, but students learn in elementary school that plastics, among other items, can get recycled, too.
“Really anything with food product on it, like a pizza box that’s greasy, cannot be recycled,” said Phelps.
According to Phelps, the issue here is that items with food residue or product on it were frequently placed in the recycling bin and would sit there overnight inviting pests into classrooms. Separating these items would create more work for custodians after school hours, so they limited it to paper instead.
Although district records show that recycling services remain active at every school, OH has chosen to limit what students and staff are asked to recycle as evidenced by the email from Phelps.
While the amount of items recycled has been narrowed over the years, staff cite that it is to prevent other things from happening, like attracting pests to classrooms.
Hello, I'm Roman Berger, and this is my first year with the 42Fifty Staff team. I am currently a Senior at Oswego High School, and plan on writing lots of articles related to the news or opinion sections. You can contact me by emailing 42Fifty@sd308.org and putting my name in the subject line. We welcome comments on our articles and feedback on our publication!
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