MBHS student starts recycling program

Thanks to Catherine Masingill and the support of Mountain Brook High School teachers and staff, MBHS now has a recycling program. We asked her to tell us how the program got started.

I got the idea for the recycling program last year after being an English teacher’s teacher aide and was constantly shredding, filing or organizing stacks and stacks of paper.

One day during my draw/paint class, our principal, Dr. Vic Wilson, was roaming the halls and made a stop by my class. I told him how I thought that MBHS needed to recycle, and he told me to get a proposal together and meet with him a couple of days after school got out.

Later that week, I was just talking about my idea, and Greer Cunningham overheard me and told me that she and her mom had recently been talking about the same thing! We got the card of a young MBHS and Alabama graduate, Will Hollingsworth, owner of Birmingham Recycling and Recovery and son of Carey Hollingsworth, who is a prominent architect in the area.

After meeting with Greer Cunningham and getting facts, we met with Dr. Wilson and he gave us more information about the school side of things. It turned out that two other groups of kids had tried to start recycling programs, but they either involved digging in the trash after school (no thanks!) or an inefficient way of recycling pick up. We realized during this meeting that recycling bins and a recycling dumpster were vital.

My job was to write a proposal and keep in contact with Will Hollingsworth. I grabbed my laptop, my notes, school maps and a notepad and went straight to the Church Street Coffee and Books store to put it all together. I was there for more than six hours and was so proud of what I had done.

After presenting my work to Dr. Wilson, he made a phone call to Mountain Brook Schools Director of Facilities Ken Key who said, “No Waste Management, we use Allied Waste for the schools!” WM had already told me they would donate 50 free bins for the classrooms and workrooms as long as we bought the dumpster.  At this point, I had to change my plans and deal with Ally Waste. I was about to go off of the deep end.

Surprisingly, it took one phone call, and Ally provided us with exactly the same deal and matched the price of the recycling dumpster! It was a blessing.

Now we have 50 classroom bins, and five larger rollable bins located in the mall, near the library and workrooms. My Leadership Mountain Brook team and I are now working with the City of Mountain Brook to put recycling receptacles in the Villages.

-Submitted by Suzanne Milligan