An 8-feet tall mesh recycling bin stood in the middle of the sunlit amphitheater at Nevada Union High School today. A quarter of it was full of white assignment sheets, Excel sheets and poster papers from recycle bins across the campus. But Reinette Senum estimated the bin would probably overflow after five days of school.

At a time when environmental issues are a hot topic at summits worldwide, Senum, a co-founder of PowerUp-NC, a local non-profit, is doing the recycling project at NU to help students perceive “the huge impact their day-to-day activities have on the planet.”

“This is a good way to physically show the campus how they affect the environment by what they use on campus,” said 17-year-old Hannah Limov, a junior at NU. “People should first reduce what they use. If they can’t, they should reuse things. As a last resort, they should recycle.”

Starting Friday, used papers will be stashed in blue recycling bags in rooms across NU, Senum said. Next Thursday, all the bags will be emptied into the mesh bin to show students how much paper they used in a single week, she added. Finally, the entire volume of papers will be weighed to determine the number of trees and other natural resources that went into its production, Senum said.

On the amphitheater wall, a long blue poster bears more than 120 names of students who’ve already participated in the project, Senum said. By next week, the number of names could increase to 200, Senum estimated.

“It’s hard to change the way people think,” said Felicia Hall, a 16-year-old NU junior. “But students are catching up (with recycling) because it’s a new fad.”

The mesh recycling bin could strike some students as “a complete waste of time, but to many others, it opens their eyes to see how many trees are actually used in a 24-hour period,” Hall added.

Hall and Limov are “Go-green” commissioners for the 2008-09 school year in the student body executive council at NU.
“This is the beginning of a new future for NU,” Hall said. “A lot of green projects will be implemented in the future. This is just one visual that students can see.”

To contact Soumitro Sen, e-mail ssen@theunion.com or call 477-4229.