FRESH Club wants students to go green

Serena Bettis • October 27, 2015

Students should make sure that they recycle anything with this symbol on it, instead of throwing it away. Photo Credit: Serena Bettis

Twenty-three percent of American adults say they never recycle. The Fossil Ridge Environment Sustainable High, or FRESH Club, works to make sure that Fossil students are not included in that statistic.

FRESH Club’s main goal is to promote environmental sustainability and create projects that have positive, lasting impacts within the school. A large focus this year is on the recycling and composting options that the club brought to FRHS six years ago for student use. Members of FRESH Club are noticing more and more water bottles, papers, and food tossed carelessly into the trashcans instead of the specific bins provided in the commons. This year, they aim to educate the student body on the importance of properly disposing of waste, and give students more places to recycle.

Over the years, FRESH Club has made many changes to school culture that now often go unnoticed. The first hydration station was implemented three years ago, and there are currently five around the school, many of which students use on a daily basis. They also sell reusable water bottles, to promote the non-use of plastic and raise money for their other projects. FRESH Club puts on the annual E-Waste drive, which allows families to bring in their old electronics to prevent them from going into the landfill, and spread awareness of the dangers E-Waste presents to the environment. When E-Waste goes through incinerators and burns, the plastic emits hazardous chemicals which can leak from landfills into towns and rivers, harming people and the ecosystem.

During Earth Week, the club promotes many activities including hosting a bike to school day, where they provide breakfast, such as free bagels or doughnuts, to students who walk or ride their bikes to school rather than taking a car or a bus. They also hope to educate students on different aspects of sustainability during this time by presenting information to different classes and creating posters to hang in the school hallways.

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In celebration of America Recycles Day, which nationally takes place on November 15 and observed at Fossil this year on November 13, FRESH Club is getting many new recycling bins for classrooms and hallways. Poudre School District celebrates FRHS as one of the best high schools in terms of efficiency and recycling efforts, but there could also be much improvement. One of the best ways to get more students to recycle is by providing them with more places to recycle. FRESH Club board members met with Mr. Allen earlier the school year and proposed a plan to purchase new recycling bins for the school. Mr. Allen gave them a generous donation for this project, and soon there will not only be trashcans in the locker bays and flex labs, but also recycling containers.

FRESH Club members also visit elementary and middle schools in the areas surrounding Fossil and give younger students presentations regarding sustainability and composting. Members also seek opportunities to educate themselves by inviting speakers to their meetings and finding environmental activities outside of school.

FRESH Club meets on Fridays during A lunch in room N102 and B lunch in W111.

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About the Contributor

Serena Bettis, Editor-in-Chief

Serena Bettis, senior, is entering into her third year on the Etched in Stone staff as this year’s Editor-in-Chief. A four year journalism student, she has high hopes for Etched in Stone this school year, and wants to be able to guide the staff in achieving their goals as much as possible. While Bettis has become a much more outspoken person than she was when she started at Fossil Ridge High School, she still finds discomfort speaking in front of large groups of people (“large” being defined anywhere from 6 to 30), but is more than ready to grow in that aspect of leadership over the course of the year. Most of her journalistic goals for the year are not personal, but rather involve the entire program. She aims to further improve upon the look of the Etched in Stone website, which she spent countless hours on her junior year, enough for it to win awards before she graduates.

Aside from Etched in Stone, Bettis takes part in the school marching, jazz, and concert bands as a flute player, volunteers with Key Club, and is the Historian for the National Honor Society. She has also held a part-time job at TCBY for over a year, and now knows more than she needs to about the sugar content in frozen yogurt. In her spare time, which is often hard to come by, Bettis can be found reading for fun, lamenting about how none of the new Young Adult romance novels she used to love so much are good anymore, working on making the perfect French macaron, or binge watching her recent addiction, Game of Thrones. Music is a large part of her life, and her favorite genre is difficult to describe because she listens to many different bands. Some of her favorites include twenty one pilots, All Time Low, and Halsey, more alternative bands such as Issues and SWMRS, pop artists including Carly Rae Jepsen (“she’s so much more than “Call Me Maybe””), and Little Mix, and various songs by Spanish singers.

She is more than ready for graduation, and aspires to be attending college in Chicago by this time next year. Bettis knows that she wants to double major in journalism and foreign languages, with a potential minor in music, though she is undecided on what specific occupation she wants after college. Her best advice to someone who does not know what they are interested in is to simply join different activities and see what happens from there. “Eventually, sometime during sophomore year, journalism became the only class I wanted to go to, and even now I love it more than I used to love band, so that’s when it hit me that this was what I wanted to be involved in for most of my life,” she said. Another somewhat undecided goal of hers is to join the Peace Corps either during or after college, and she hopes that an experience in a different country with complete strangers might help her figure out what exactly she wants to do with her life.

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Alivia Smith • Oct 28, 2015 at 11:01 am

Serena, great job using the poll in your article. It is just what we need to be seeing more of on the paper.


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