Mel Steinberg, Grade 7, Greenwich

Does GCS Reduce, Reuse, & Recycle?

My initial research question was this: Does Greenwich Central School District (G.C.S.), specifically the Junior-Senior High, use recycled paper products, and if not, would it be cost-effective to do so?  According to The Resourceful Schools Project, recycling saves trees, landfill space, and massive amounts of oil and electricity. Not only would money be saved, but what about the environment? We wanted to find the answers to these questions because G.C.S. currently has a recycling program called S.T.O.P., Students To Oppose Pollution.  If our school is recycling paper, we want to know if we are completing the recycling flow by also purchasing recycled paper.

The answers to these questions were searched for at the G.C.S. website, www.greewichcsd.org, I couldn’t find them so I wrote an email to Beth Ann Mosher of the Greenwich Central School Business Office. We asked her a few questions about the school’s 2005-2006 budget and the paper products the school purchases. Beth Ann Mosher informed us that the Greenwich schools purchase their plain copy paper from Ricoh Corp. They buy 650 cases of “virgin, not made from recycled product” plain copy paper, and about 225 of these cases are used by the Junior-Senior High. The plain white copy paper costs about $20.13 per case, thus the high school spends about $4,500 on their copy paper. Mrs. Mosher informed us that “…various amounts of pre 3-hole punched paper and colored paper are also used,” and it is concluded from this that this paper is not from recycled products either.

These were some of the questions that I had asked Mrs. Mosher: “…how much of the Greenwich Central Junior-Senior High School budget is spent on paper products such as computer paper, lined paper, envelopes, and maintenance paper products in the current of past school year?”  This question was not directly answered, but given the cost and amount of plain white paper used, G.C.S. Junior-Senior High spends about $4,500. But it is not know how much of the budget is spent on lined paper, colored paper, or any other paper products.

I next asked, “…of those paper products, what percent are made from recycled paper?”

This question was not directly answered either, but it is concluded, to the best of our knowledge, that little of G.C.S.’s paper products, other than the paper towels made of 40% recycled fiber, are made from recycled paper.

“From where are the school’s paper products purchased, and do they (the suppliers) offer recycled paper?”  www.ricoh-usa.com provided no information on their paper products, let alone recycled paper products(edited).

My original hypothesis was that our school used about 25% recycled paper products, but I was incorrect. To the best of my knowledge, the Greenwich Central Junior-Senior High uses little in the way of recycled paper products.