Our school campus is beautiful—with a large green front lawn, trees dispersed throughout the grounds, and murals and school projects that line the hallways. Yet there is one thing that constantly takes our eyes away from viewing these wonderful items--the trash that surrounds our school.

Trash is everywhere, carelessly littered across the hallways, the quad, classrooms, the lawn and elsewhere. The reason for this is simple: students do not want to take the effort to throw away their trash from their lunch or class work, and just leave it where ever they are standing. But how does this affect the school?

Our school has attempted campus clean ups in the past, by having teachers volunteer their students’ time for about ten minutes after lunch to clean up pieces of scrap around campus. The green team two years ago purchased recycling bins to be placed around campus in order to promote recycling what a person can rather than throwing it all into the trash. The administration walks around campus and reprimands the students who do not throw their trash away. Yet with all of these reminders and people supporting trash being thrown away, the students still do not do it.

The head custodian, Larry Heldt, goes around the campus after lunch every day to collect the garbage and recycling bins, along with dropped trash, to attempt to keep our campus clean. This should not be in his job description though, because we are young adults at this school, trying to get an education so we can go out in the world and succeed, and if with these capable talents, we should be able to do such a simple task. But this cannot be accomplished if we keep leaving our trash all around campus.

Trash can take hundreds, if not thousands of years to decompose, and if no one ever tells the Montgomery students to stop littering, then they will never learn to pick it up. The waste can overcrowd our local ecosystem and destroy it.

So I am presenting a challenge to all of the Montgomery students. Take charge with this issue, and take it seriously. Waste production can be managed and brought down by bringing lunches in reusable lunch bags and food products in Tupperware containers such as Glad or Ziploc. Rather than using a water bottle, which can choke ecosystems, use a reusable water bottle, or pick one up in the business office for $10. If you see someone leaving their trash around campus, or they miss the trash can while trying to putting some in, tell them. Help them learn to pick it up, and tell them why you are doing this. More importantly, throw your own trash away. With the number of garbage cans around campus, it is hard to not find one within twenty feet from where you are standing. If we, as a student body, take charge in this issue, we can help to beautify our campus and keep our local ecosystem healthy for years to come. So why not give it a try.