In past years, students have had the option during lunch to recycle their plastic bottles and pop cans, but this year that has changed. There’s no longer a recycling can in the cafeteria so instead students are forced to throw away their bottles and cans with the regular garbage.

Every person produces approximately four pounds of trash daily, which adds up to about one thousand pounds of solid waste yearly. Almost two million bottles are thrown away hourly, and the United States is currently the number one trash- producing country in the world.The problem with generating this much waste is that most of it ends up in landfills and it’s having a serious impact on the environment.

The way to help reduce the amount of garbage in these landfills is through recycling.  Almost 75 percent of all waste is recyclable, but the problem that’s arising is that only 30 percent is actually recycled.

“Recycling is important because our world is becoming a huge landfill with all the waste we produce. In order to reduce this massive amount of waste, we need to, reduce, reuse and recycle,” Senior Kayleigh Roberts said.

The idea of following the three Rs (reduce, reuse and recycle) has been taught in schools for a long time. Freedom does follow these rules by having a paper recycling program  in place. Up until last year there was another program that focused on recycling bottles and cans that students had during lunch.

Unfortunately the program wasn’t able to take place this year due to a problem with having the recycling picked up.

“I think the issue is likely because Beaver County does not have any kind of county wide formal recycling program. So, we could collect the recycling but it would be up to us to find somewhere to take it,” Principal William Deal said.

The paper program is able to take place because it’s a county wide program with a dumpster that the paper is collected into. If the county was able to provide the school with a way to transport the recyclables, then the program could be brought back next year, which has numerous benefits.

“Having recycling would be better for the environment, that way we could reduce our footprint, reduce our waste. There may be financial benefits  if we were to recycle a bunch of cans we could get some money back but that is not the important part. It may never be profitable for us but it would reduce our bioimpact,” Deal said.