From January 29th to February 14th, the Sustainability Board held an E-Waste drive to help dispose of electronic devices. Students were able to bring in E-waste collectibles: including cords, monitors, and batteries in exchange for prizes. Items were then taken to an E-Waste site to be disposed of.
The Sustainability Board of Campo’s Leadership class decided to do this because they noticed that the school wasn’t doing its best when it came to recycling and reusing waste. “We learned a couple years ago that we were one of the main contributors to all the trash…in the Lamorinda community,” said Sustainability Board member sophomore Caitlyn Williams. This also helps set a precedent for the other schools who might be struggling with the waste they’re producing as well.
The idea came from another member of the board, senior Arjun Krishnan. He said he remembered from his AP Environmental Science class that lots of people have a “big box of wires that [they] don’t know what to do with and disposing of it improperly can really harm the environment.”
Leadership did lots to prepare for the E-Waste Drive and to drum up student interest. This included getting “together a ton of boxes”, calling “the Berkeley E-waste site to make an appointment to come and drop off electronics”, and making “a ton of videos” to be posted on to the Campolindo Instagram page, explained Williams.
This drive helps the environment in a number of ways. Another member of the board, senior Max Marino, said they are mainly trying to make it so “the chemicals that seep into the environment when people don’t properly recycle E-Waste” are kept from earth’s habitats by “properly recycling” electronics. This protection was the biggest goal of the Sustainability Board and the impact they have made so far has certainly been significant. “I think a lot of [E-waste] ends up in the wrong places and harms the environment, but by actually delivering it to the proper facilities, we can make sure that it’s disposed of properly,” said Krishnan.
Further, doing drives like this don’t just protect the environment from chemicals, but also allow people to get more use out of products before they are thrown away. “Computers that are old can also get donated and repurposed for their parts,” said President of the Sustainability Board senior Marcus Han. This is monumental because it helps the environment by reducing energy that would be spent making more of these products when they can easily be reused.
The drive has been incredibly successful and worked to further the board’s endeavors of making Campo more sustainable. “We have around 350 pounds of E-waste [as of February 9], and we expect to get over 500 pounds by the end of the drive,” said Han. This has been a great achievement for the board and they are very excited about this achievement.
The board has many other initiatives they will organize throughout the year. “We’re holding a night market later this year where people will be able to buy formal coats, clothes, and dresses…it’s going to have a nice little jazz cafe type atmosphere,” said Han. They plan to focus their sustainability all throughout the campus with different events. The board does a lot of work in the garden and the Campo Swap, “which is a great way to recycle or reuse old spirit wear and clothes instead of sending them to the trash,” said Williams.
With the board and their many events, Campo seems to be moving in the right direction when it comes to sustainability and recycling. “A lot of different programs are going on to make Campolindo more sustainable and I think that’s a really amazing positive development this year,” said Krishnan.
By the end of the E-Waste Drive, they collected ___ pounds.
