Willow Glen Resident

Education

Photograph by Vicki Thompson

Less Trash: River Glen parent coordinator Rosa Maria Gordillo-Garfunkel (left) helped write a grant for the school's recycling program. The school received $1,500 in February to jump-start recycling.

River Glen School recycling has students thinking green at home

By Mayra Flores De Marcotte

Five months ago, parents at River Glen School decided to make the campus more eco-friendly and started recycling. Now they are seeing the results.

The new recycling program came together through the efforts of River Glen parent Rosa Maria Gordillo-Garfunkel.

"We went from throwing away seven to 10 bags of garbage to four to five bags," Gordillo-Garfunkel says. "They're no longer going to the landfill, but are being utilized."

Gordillo-Garfunkel and other parents went to an environmental education conference in October 2006 and in December, Gordillo-Garfunkel applied for a grant through the Go Green Initiative, an organization that promotes green alternatives at schools with small grants.

The school received a $1,500 grant in February to be used toward its fledgling recycling program.

The grant allows flexibility, and local residents can decide what works best for each school, Gordillo-Garfunkel says.

"Some schools go solar, others change their landscaping to use water more efficiently," she says, "but this grant allows us to make modifications according to our needs."

The parent of a first-grader, Gordillo-Garfunkel is an advocate of environmental education and says it all comes down to consistency.

"We have to have an echo," she says, "what you do at home should also be done at school and vice versa. We need to be willing to change habits."

Luckily, the environment at River Glen is predisposed to recycle, says parent Laura Romero.

"As parents we had noticed how much trash the schools generate," Romero says. "Rosa Maria led and we followed. It's something we love doing."

The hard work in the beginning was training the students to sort their trash before tossing it out.

"I'm noticing even little ones come up and do it themselves," she says. "It becomes so easy for them, like second nature. It's instilling that sense of stewardship for our planet."

The idea of including a recycling program at River Glen is not a new one, says principal Millie Arrellano. In the past, teachers have asked why the school didn't implement one. Arrellano says programs such as the one at River Glen haven't been around at most school campuses because there has been a lack of district funding.

This small step toward teaching the students responsibility for their actions, such as recycling, can translate into a larger impact in the future, the principal says.

"In light of global warming and natural resources being depleted, I think that environmental awareness is important as a resident of this Earth," Arrellano says. "I think we're getting our children engaged in some of the concerns we have for our world and getting them to be proactive."