Poly Goes Green for Gold

For the past thirteen years, Ms. Schwichtenberg’s classes have been saving the Earth one bottle at a time.

The students who developed this program sort, bag, and recycle almost 3,300 pounds of recyclables from Poly’s campus every year. After collecting the recycling, students in the program receive money from a larger recycling receptacle. This money goes towards supplies and activities for Poly’s special needs classes.

Not only does the project help Mother Earth, but it also helps special needs students to attain hands-on experience outside of the classroom.

“We like to encourage students with special needs to be a part of the program to give them specially designed job training and vocational education skills,” said. Ms. Schwichtenberg. “This helps prepare them for finding a job, learning to work in groups, time management, signing in and out, [and] banking and budgeting.”

These students’ efforts have led to the development of well- prepared young adults and a greener campus for Poly.

The program has even received acknowledgments from the City of Long Beach, and participated in the “Keep America Beautiful High School Recycling Contest.”

Poly’s recycling program is a well-oiled machine. Those who choose to participate in the recycling program at Poly have a routine for carrying out the recycling process.

Students can be seen every day during fifth period in their teams, collecting the bottles and cans from the blue bins of the classrooms that opt to have their recycling picked up.

But, what many people don’t see is the effort they put in to process the recycling.

Once a week, this recycling is received by one of Poly’s staff members and then sold to a larger receptacle. The money is given to the students every two weeks.

This process is beneficial because the students learn to record their work in time sheets and their paychecks in budget folders.

Students at Poly may not think about where their bottle goes once they toss it into a blue bin. But Jackrabbits can take pride that they not only help the environment when they recycle, but they help to provide job training to special needs students at Poly.