Green Cup Recycle Challenge, Incentives or not?

    Composting and Recycling in HSES has been a huge  component into being a more Green and Environmental School. By this, we entered in our first year in the Green Cup Recycle Challenge which is nationwide! Many of you are wondering what exactly the Green Cup Recycle Challenge is. These are the basics components to it:

• It lasts about 4 weeks.

• 20 trash/recycling/composting bins in total are used.

• At the end of each week you record data to the 20 bins picked, to see if they are correct or incorrect.

• Correct bins have no contamination of trash such as all the recycle bins only contain recyclables. Incorrect is if a recycling bin has trash, as an example.

• At the end of the challenge the school gets the joy of lowering emissions of CO2 and throwing out millions of trash every year.

This is such an amazing impact because of the fact that we, as students, have the power to do this at a young age. We shouldn’t need incentives to motivate us to do this. We need to help the environment as much as we can for future generations to have a safe and beautiful environment. As high school students we should be able to compost and recycle and not be ignorant about having to do so. Last year’s Green Cup Challenge winners were Middle Schoolers! That's crazy and cool at the same time but come on! Why can't high school students accomplish what Middle Schoolers did in Virgina? In the end, high school students should be more aware of composting and recycling and doing it the right way!! 


The real question of the Green Cup Recycle Challenge is if there is any incentives to the schools that are participating? So far as research goes, according to the respective websites by the end of each of the 4 weeks you earn points. The school that earns the most points gets recognition of lowering emissions, composting, recycling, and saving energy. Since the Green Cup Challenge just started it has not been clear if there is a actual prize. At the end of the Challenge, there will be more information as to what the real incentives are. Keep posted guys till next time! :)


Citations:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/veronique-pittman/national-2012-green-cup-r_b_1377309.html
http://www.greencupchallenge.net/recyclechallenge/index.html