“The average person generates over 4 pounds of trash every day and about 1.5 tons of solid waste per year. Americans make more than 200 million tons of garbage each year, enough to fill Busch Stadium from top to bottom twice a day.”(dosomething.org)

Recycling impacts our everyday lives as well as the earth that we all live on. This message is what the LEAP Club conveyed this Earth Day at Wahlert.

“LEAP Club means Leaders of Environmental Action and Protection, but we try to do much more than that. We try to bring awareness about the problems going on with the Earth, and then try to offer people ways to combat those issues,” said Liz Wilgenbusch,’19.

LEAP club used Earth Day to bring attention to problems right here at Wahlert. The message students are sending is that small gestures can make a big impact on the Earth.

“LEAP is trying to convey that the environment is important even though we often forget to recognize it as high schoolers. The Earth is our one and only. It is mistreated, and we cannot let that stand for future generations. We are just trying to expose high schoolers to helping the environment and how easy it can be,” said Joey Rauch, ‘19

To start off Earth week, students could wear green shirts on Monday, and the LEAP club put together a prayer service.

“During our prayer service, we hoped to bring more awareness of what is happening to the Earth, and we announced that we would be having an electronic recycling bin outside of Ms. Schriver’s door. If anyone had an old tablet or phone that they are no longer using, they could recycle it, which could benefit the Earth instead of hurting it if you were to throw it away,” said Wilgenbusch.

 LEAP Club topped off Earth Day by created a recycling challenge. From April 30th to May 4th, the LEAP Club will be going through classes’ recycling bins and picking out the things that are not recyclable. The class with the least amount of non-recyclable items will receive an ice cream party on May 11th during seminar.

“Just doing a simple act of placing a piece of paper or bottle in the big yellow bins could limit the amount of waste that is placed into the world and will allow for that item to be reused,” said Wilgenbusch.