On March 15, Green Club will find out if it will be able to receive 2,500 dollars through the Recyclebank program. Each 250 points earned on the website amounts to one dollar, and anyone can participate. The donation period started at the beginning of February.

Science teacher and Green Club adviser Mr. Brandon Shurter explains how Recyclebank works.

“Recyclebank is a program that is in many communities that do curbside recycling,” Mr. Shurter said. “If you recycle your curb, you can go online and tell them you recycled. You get points every week for recycling.”

Junior Louis Rolland is a member of Green Club and encourages students to participate in the program and earn points, which can then be donated to RHS.

“If you’re a student, then you can set up your Recyclebank account or ask your parents and see if they have a Recyclebank account. [Students can also] play games on the website and earn points by doing things on the website,” Rolland said. “Basically just ask your parents about Recyclebank and see if they have one and if not try to set one up. If you help Rochester out, then we can help save the environment.”

This is the first time Green Club is participating in Recyclebank, and according to Mr. Shurter, it has been a great experience so far.

“This is the first year we applied for the grant– this is the first year I have heard about the grant, and it’s been awesome,” Mr. Shurter said. “It was a little easier than I thought to get the points. The community really came together before I even put the word out and had already donated 20 percent of what we needed.”

Mr. Shurter discusses what Green Club is doing in addition to their weekly tasks in order to achieve their goal more quickly.

“To achieve the goal, Green Club is spreading the word around the community,” Mr. Shurter said. “We put it in the Falcon flier that goes home to parents and we put a staff email out so the staff knows about it and Green Club themselves.”

Junior George Sweda talks about his personal experience with Recyclebank so far.

“I have been using [Recyclebank], but most of the points I got that I donated were from my dad’s account,” Sweda said. “I also did some games and quizzes online on the website and it is kind of time consuming but it’s worth it in the end.”

He also explains more about Recyclebank and references details that might not be widely known.

“Many people don’t know this, but a lot of kids’ parents do have Recyclebank accounts from previous schools that do fundraisers,” Sweda said. “That can add up to a lot of points over the years and you can utilize those points by donating to us instead of just leaving the account alone.”

Mr. Shurter explains why it’s important to keep the end goal in mind.

“What we plan on doing with [the check] is to replace paper towel dispensers in some of the bathrooms with eco-friendly hand dryers,” Mr. Shurter said.

Rolland discusses the benefits of the new hand dryers regarding the impact on the school.

“The benefits of having the electric hand dryers is reducing the paper towel waste, because we use a lot of paper towels and it’s going to landfills,” Rolland said. “The hand dryers use up a lot less electricity than the ones we have now. They’re a lot more efficient so they’ll reduce the school electric bills.”

New, high-speed hand dryers can also have personal benefits.

“[Electric hand dryers] dry your hands a lot faster, so you don’t have to worry about the paper towels dispensers being empty,” Rolland said. “It [also] makes the janitors’ jobs a lot easier…They don’t have to worry about going around and picking up paper towels and about the dispensers being empty.”