One School, Two Environments

"I get embarrassed bringing people to my school, because I’m deathly afraid they won’t see past the trash."

By Ricky Zhang

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How can one school have both a successful recycling program and a huge littering problem? That’s the case at California’s Oakland High School, which generates more than 260 cubic yards of waste every month—that’s enough to fill Oakland High’s history classroom with 9 feet of trash. The school’s Environmental Science Academy, for kids interested in science, is in its seventh year. But only 10% of the school’s student population is part of ESA. And Youth Radio’s Ricky Zhang says the enthusiasm of Academy members for cleaning up the campus hasn’t rubbed off on the rest of the student body.

Walk through a stairwell after lunch at my school, and you’ll be tripping over chip-bags and soda cans, and wading through a garden of sunflower seeds freshly watered with saliva. Fusima Latu says she wishes kids would think more about what they’re doing.

FUSIMA (on tape)
I guess – kids think it’s not cool to throw your trash away – it would be like, would you go to your house and live in a pile of trash?

RICKY
Obviously, some kids DO care how our school looks…Oakland High has a serious recycling program. It’s part of our Environmental Science Academy, or ESA, a special academic program for kids into science and nature. Kevin Jordan is a science teacher who helped found ESA.

MR. JORDAN (on tape)
Basically, in Oakland, we have a culture of trash and our kids grow up—often times, maybe in households where recycling is not going on and seeing trash on the streets—our neighborhood’s in trouble so when we’re trying to get them to recycle here often times we’re really starting from zero.

RICKY
Oh my God! Did Mr. Jordan just say we have a culture of trash in Oakland? I should be appalled by that, but honestly, I’m not! Mr. Jordan has a point...

MR. JORDAN (on tape)
I am getting these kids to do this task that isn’t very desirable, and one of them was carrying a recycling bin – and took a punch while they were carrying the recycling bin out to the recycling place outside. So at that point we have to really look at, “Are our hallways safe enough to carry out this task?”

RICKY
Apparently not, because Mr. Jordan says he shut down the recycling program for about a month after the punching incident. That made life even harder for Oakland High’s two day-time custodians, who handle garbage generated by over two thousand students. What does custodian Sylvester Lawston see?

SYLVESTER (on tape)
You know I see a lot of trash that I throw away that should be recycled, but you know, my job is to throw away trash and if it’s in the cans I got to throw away…You know, I’m not gonna separate it, I mean, but, I see a lot of waste. A lot of waste.

RICKY
Well, I see a lot of waste too... There’s the trash can – and a trail of ants all over it! Look at all these ants – it’s disgusting!

Marisol Ochoa thinks she knows why recycling hasn’t rubbed off on everyone. She says, while she and other ESA students go on cool field trips to the local lake or the dump, the general population at Oakland High never learns where trash really goes.

MARISOL (on tape)
Like they don’t know exactly what happens to that piece of gum. It goes into the water, it goes into our lake – into our ocean, and in ESA you learn about all that stuff. We see what happens. We see the results.

RICKY
Lanikqua Howard is also in ESA. She has her own theory to explain our trash complex.

LANIKQUA (on tape)
In some manners it might be psychological. Students don’t throw away their trash and they feel like...it’s like I don’t like this school – teachers give me bad grades so I don’t care about this school – and I’m going to trash it – but it’s not fair to other people that like this campus.

RICKY
But of course, I can’t just talk ABOUT litterers. I need to talk TO one, too...Like senior Lindsay Castillo.

LINDSAY (on tape)
I want my neighborhood to look better than my school, usually because, it’s where I live – it’s my sanctuary.

RICKY
BUT, Lindsay says school is just a place she has to “get through.” So she “accidentally” drops her wrappers and cans on the floor at Oakland High all the time.

LINDSAY (on tape)
The school does bring the worst out of you – it can encourage littering – it’s a stressful environment.

RICKY
Sure, it’s stressful. But there are so many wonderful things about our school. Like, in my English class, there are students who speak seven different languages. And we have some kick ass homecoming rallies. But I get embarrassed bringing people to my school, because I’m deathly afraid they won’t see past the trash, and they’ll think of it as just another low ranked Oakland public school.


- This story was produced by Youth Radio’s Environmental Desk, in association with National Geographic.