Why keep track of the waste you make? Well, the majority of students at Enact club’s no waste Wednesday activity replied most waste end up in landfills. When waste lands in landfills it produces a greenhouse gas called methane. Methane emissions are a major factor driving climate change as methane has 80 times more power than carbon dioxide to warm the atmosphere.

“No waste Wednesday is an event where Enact Club members, and anyone who is interested, keep track of all the trash they generate in a day, trying to minimize it. Then we meet and discuss what we observed. It’s harder than you think to not make any trash,” NPHS Enact Club Advisor John Collier said.

February 2nd was the first time Enact club implemented their new activity called no waste Wednesday. The idea was inspired by the officers in the club and was a success as many students appeared to talk about the waste they produced throughout the school day.

“We had a lot of students show up to discuss and the conversations were interesting and meaningful, so I think there’s a good chance we do it again,” added Collier.

This activity turned out to be a learning experience for students, many reflect back on their day and think about adjustments they can make to their daily schedule to produce less waste.

“When I get home and I am cooking tonight, I am going to be thinking a lot more about how I can reuse,” Enact Club officer Emma Worthington explained.

“I didn’t produce a lot of waste but when I am at home I have zip lock bags from my snacks…I usually don’t think about the amount of waste I produce…When you actually consider the amount of waste you produce you feel like limiting consumption,” Enact Club officer Akshita Pawar said.

“Thankfully today I only had one granola wrapper…and aluminum paper which I definitely could have used tubber ware for but I think [aluminum paper] was just easier to fit into my backpack. When I am at home cooking dinner I definitely have a lot of waste because I have to cut a lot of vegetables. It certainly helped me realize that I could do a lot,” Enact Club officer Sadia Rahat added.

Collier tried tracking his own waste throughout the day, surprisingly he only had a single yogurt container that had to be thrown out. Way to go Collier!

“I’ve actually done a version of this as a student where I physically needed to carry the trash I made with me throughout the day, and for a full 24 hours. It’s wild how much trash we make. However, with this, we were going in with the mindset of minimizing our waste and I’d only had a single yogurt container that actually needed to be thrown out. But as we discussed at the meeting, there’s a lot of waste that doesn’t show up by lunchtime – all the bigger containers that eventually get emptied and thrown out,” said Collier.

Enact club has more activities planned for the upcoming months.

“Right now we’re hosting a tree sapling sale to offset paper usage at NPHS. We’re selling them through this link until March 9th and then on April 9th, we’re hosting a drive-through event to come pick up your ordered saplings. Then at the end of April, we’re hosting our Hop Into Spring event, which is a day of games, crafts, and nature activities in our nature center aimed at pre-school and elementary-aged kids. Some of our members are also organizing a networking conference for high school environmental clubs. We’ve always got quite a few events on deck,” explained Collier.