Schools
Mineola Student Asks for Expanded Recycling Program
School district to examine recycling of bottlecaps, partnership with North Hempstead program.
Rare is the politician who keeps one of his campaign promises.
Fourth grader Ethan Sargent, slowly approached the microphone in front of the at the November 17 meeting to ask if the school district could expand the recycling program, a promise on which he ran to be president of “K-Kids,” one of the student organizations. The main thrust of Ethan’s promise was to expand the recycling program to include bottlecaps as well as an art and video contest made of recyclable materials for Earth Day.
Ethan’s mother Abby next came to speak, saying that the class cannot participate in bottlecap recycling because Mineola is not one of the districts that partner with the . There are a total of 11 school districts in North Hempstead with 2 districts not participating in the program, one of them being Mineola.
Find out what's happening in Mineolawith free, real-time updates from Patch.
“I haven’t figured out yet why we couldn’t do both,” Sargent said of the town and district recycling program. “Our tax dollars have already paid for these awesome programs.”
According to Sargent, recycling bins at the were also not being emptied and efforts at recycling in the school were in decline.
Find out what's happening in Mineolawith free, real-time updates from Patch.
“I feel like we’ve already paid for it, my tax dollars, all of our tax dollars paid for the partnership with the Town of North Hempstead,” Sargent said. “I’ve already paid for this program. You, anyone else who lives in the Town of North Hempstead, this is a program that my tax dollars already went to so shouldn’t I get what I paid for?”
After stating that he “was not asked to start any kind of program with recycling,” only to explain why the district does not use the town and to look at the programs the town offers, Superintendent Dr. Michael Nagler said that each club’s teacher advisor, specifically the environmental club advisor, “is gung-ho, we have a ton of recycling. When that advisor or doesn’t have the kids that want to do it, it falls off; every building has something different.”
As an example, last year the had a compost pile and planted a tree.
“If K-Kids wants to do something, I don’t understand why the advisor isn’t asking on behalf of the children to have something done,” Dr. Nagler said, feeling it was “unreasonable” to remove current recycler, Royal Waste, who has done “a very good job and I’m sure if we asked the company to accommodate what we want, they would.”
Royal Waste currently serves 250 schools across Long Island, including Roslyn, St. Aiden’s and . Recycling bins do exist in the school buildings with pickups at least twice a week according to Royal Waste general manager Joseph Morra. The company has been the district’s recycler for the past 6 years and collects an average of 1.5 tons of paper per month from the schools for free and the school PTAs have received the money from the recycling for the past 4 years.
“The Town of North Hempstead is hiring a company to come and pick up the recycling,” Morra said. “They’re paying money for equipment for recycling. That’s our tax dollars too. It never cost Mineola school district a dime for any the recycling we’ve done here so far.” He added that the district was also not charged the normal fee for holding an e-waste recycling event last year at the middle school since electronic waste disposal carries a fee. Morra did state that the recycling program could be expanded if the district so desired.
“Can we do a better job? I’m sure we can,” the superintendent said. “But it’s about the adults in the buildings helping the children. Just because we sign up for a program, doesn’t mean it’s going to happen.”
According to North Hempstead Solid Waste Commissioner Igor Sikiric, an employee does contact the schools “constantly, asking them how they’re doing it.” The town also provides recycling bins and dumpsters to classrooms and buildings, composters for buildings and collects bottlecaps.
Sikiric said that it was not his understanding that Mineola would be prohibited from participating because it does not recycle with the town. “I’d have to speak with the supervisor (but) I’m sure he’d be fine with getting the school district on board,” he said, adding that the district as a whole may also participate in the bottlecap recycling while Royal will keep the paper. “It’s a possibility.”
Dr. Nagler stated that the environmental club collects caps “and you don’t need to be a part of anything, they’re already doing it, but that’s the high school.”
“It’s essentially the same thing, it’s just who is taking it away,” board President Christine Napolitano said. “I don’t see where any of these programs that are in this program is essentially something that we can’t do also; it’s not something that the Town of North Hempstead owns.”
Dr. Nagler told young Ethan that he was “going to personally follow up on this and I’m going to make sure that you have a program that you would like to have in K-Kids.”
Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.