The UnGarbage Crew

The UnGarbage Crew, located in the Santa Clara Unified School District as an environmental club on Wilcox High School’s campus, is dedicated to improving the community and environment that it resides in and beyond. Established in the year 2005 as a community outreach project with the aid of Stanford University’s Quest Scholars Program to fulfill a United Nations commitment, the UnGarbage Crew is an environmental organization that is dedicated to abating our ecological footprint by reducing, reusing, and recycling. The UGC strives to reduce the amount of waste through the interrelations between students across different grade levels in order to pursue our goal of: " saving the world, one piece at a time." Many mentions of the UGC have been included in the school newspaper, The Scribe, highlighting the positive impact our fifty members have had while taking out the paper, can, and bottle recycling materials of the entire campus serving 2000 members of the student body. Since the start of our club, Wilcox is seen to have recycled nearly twice as much as the entire district put together making us the greenest campus of the district. Early efforts of our club involved recycling the mass amount of waste students and faculty alike created during the school year. This involved obtaining recycling bins that were placed in each and every classroom for paper, bottles, cans, and styrofoam. We have made many strides in this area and have had much success. Now is the time to expand our vision and goals. We plan to initiate a recycling program similar to ours at other schools within our district. Elementary school students, middle school students, and high school students will all interact to make this happen with the support of adult members of the community. This would foster not only a better environment but stronger bonds between community members and students. With that being said... Recycling is good, but reducing is better. The quality of water at our high school is barely acceptable for drinking. Being unnaturally high in minerals it leaves a residue and a bad taste thus turning students away from drinking fountains. In turn students buy water bottles, which are bad for the environment. To reduce the amount of harmful plastic in society, we seek to install water filters on school fountains to reduce the purchases of water bottles. Check out our website! http://wilcox.ugc.googlepages.com