A clear, blue bag is synonymous with one message: Give me your plastic, paper, and tin cans, and I will send them off to become a tote with the words “I was once a bottle” printed on it. Recycling bins have blended into Parker’s habitat, becoming a camouflage part of the school’s ecosystem. Overnight, however, plastic blue trash bins which once held cardboard signs made by middle schoolers encouraging the Parker community to recycle disappeared from the school’s campus.

There was no school-wide election in which we decided recycling was bad, nor did someone stage a “recycle bin heist” one night. Instead, the beloved but greatly underappreciated recycle bins were taken away because plastic, paper, and tin cans were not the only items that rested in them.

While students were chatting about their spring break plans, Director of Facilities Richard Dusing Jr. noticed something odd about the report from Waste Management. Parker was getting fined, which wasn’t so out of the norm, but he noticed that Parker got fined for every recycle bag sent to them.

“You get fined if there is even one thing in the recycle bin continmated,” Dusing said. “This could mean food still stuck on a paper plate, a dirty paper towel, any liquid container that is not emptied out. The list goes on. Everything must be in pristine condition.”

Parker has been getting fined for years for contaminated recycle bins, Dusing noted. The difference now is that Waste Management no longer sorts out the non recyclable items. If they open the bag and see a halfway filled Gatorade bottle, the entire bag gets sent to the landfill.

“I thought to myself, what’s the point?” Dusing said. “We would still pay the fines if things got sorted out, but that is no longer the case anymore. Everything was being sent to the landfill anyways.”

This is a temporary solution to a larger issue. Head of Environmental Committee and senior William Holtz believes that the Parker community needs to be educated on what is and isn’t recyclable.

“Talking to my peers and other students, the one thing that kept coming up was the fact that people didn’t know what was recyclable and what wasn’t,” Holtz said. “I hope that next year’s environmental heads will do a better job educating the student body on this matter. I wish we had done more of that this year.”

Dusing also believes the problem lies in education.

“Our biggest challenge will be educating the Parker community on what can and cannot be recycled,” Dusing said. “After that, we will need to find a way to encourage people to follow these rules. For example, will students want to go out of their way to pour out their half-drunken Gatorade while rushing to class?”

Holtz agrees with Dusing. He hopes that the school will find ways to make recycling more accessible and easier for students.

“In an ideal world, it will become a habit,” Holtz said. “People won’t need to think about what is and isn’t recyclable. They will just know.”