Who is in charge of the recycling process at Sutton Public Schools?
The person in charge of the Recycling process and many other things is David Richard. He is the facilities manager for the Sutton Public Schools, and I interviewed him and asked him questions about recycling.
There are two different types of trash/recycling cans, yellow and gray. The yellow cans are for trash, such as food, and the gray cans with a hole on top are for recycling, like plastic.
The issue they are having with these bins is that if regular trash is placed in a gray bin, it is no longer considered recycling.
Mr. Richard emphasized that the gray bins located in the cafeteria are strictly for recycling. When they clean out the baskets, if they do not find any trash in the recycling they take the bag and bring it out to the red dumpsters in the back of the school.
One of the dumpsters is for trash, and one is strictly for recycling, so when whoever takes the recycling it out, they put it into that bin. The recycling dumpsters get picked up every week, in both the elementary and high school.
Where do cardboard and metal go? The cardboard is mainly coming from the kitchen, so most of it will be sitting on the loading docks.
He has a program with Special Education director Mrs. Jessica Burque and some of her students flatten the cardboard. After it has been flattened, they take it outside, and it’s part of one of her trainings. The rest of the cardboard gets put into the same recycling dumpster.
Large metal items are kept for welding projects or taken to a metal transplant and given to them. They take the metal and give money back to the school. They also recycle electronics, and they have a certain program for it. As needed, they will call a company, and the company comes and picks up the electronics, then they recycle the electronics.
How does the recycling work in classrooms?
There are green and blue bins, or sometimes a tote-like bin; these are for recycling. Every classroom in the school should have at least one recycling bin.
As they get filled up by teachers and students, usually you can find papers and sometimes soda bottles, etc. The custodians then empty that into a separate container from the regular trash, which go into the same dumpster. Waste management takes the dumpsters and empties them.
What to recycle? What could be improved? Mr. Richard hopes people improve by not being lazy and throwing trash into recycling bins. This would be a big help to him and the custodians.
Overall, Sutton Public Schools does a lot of recycling, and for the most part, students and staff do a good job of recycling and helping out the custodians and the environment.
