Grand Junction High School’s environmental science classes had a hard time collecting trash for a recent plastic project.

According to Matthew Garhart, environmental science teacher at GJHS, he has students go around the school toward  the end of the year to collect plastic trash for a class project.

“When we’ve done this in the past, it’s definitely been the parking lot [where most plastic is found]. Not only the student parking lot, but the side parking lots along the alley. Anywhere where students are parking is where we traditionally found the most trash,” said Garhart.

This year, between all of Garhart’s classes, students only filled half of a trash bag. This is the first time this has ever happened at our school.

“Up until this year we would have multiple trash bags full of trash. And this year was really cool because that had changed,” said Garhart.

One reason our school has been kept cleaner is because of a community service class for special needs students. They go out often and pick up trash and help clean up anything that shouldn’t be outside.

“The school district has actually had more people cleaning up areas. And there’s been a lot of factors that are contributing to that. But hopefully students are just using the trash cans more. I was really impressed when we didn’t see macro-plastics,” said Garhart.