As some of you might have seen by the green and black K-Cycle boxes next to the trash cans in the Tartan Cafe, the SMES Environmental Club (@smes.sustainable on Instagram) has been hosting a K-Cup drive to facilitate the recycling of the pods and make our coffee- and tea-drinking habits more sustainable on campus. The Environmental Club, led by Nadia Momtaz with the help of Amelia Kerr, Ashley Shananhan, and Devin Thomas, hopes to show fellow SMES students how they can easily incorporate more sustainability into their daily lives and thinking. The club also strives to raise awareness about the wastefulness of consumer-driven lifestyles. Personally, Nadia Momtaz takes to thrifting and avoiding fast fashion as much as possible, making her own clothes, and shopping at the farmer’s market. She is also involved at the Bishop’s Office of LA, which hopes to inspire changes in the Episcopal community that benefit the environment.
The Environmental Club’s co-founders all bring something unique to the team and help the club run smoothly. Ashley is inspired to help out because of her interest in environmental public policy, and also enjoyed taking AP Environmental Science this year. Amelia is a passionate STEM student, cares about the environment, and even thrifted her junior prom dress this year. Devin, next year’s senior ASB president, has a lot of experience getting the student body involved and excited about helping with community-benefitting initiatives. The team started planning their K-Cup drive over Winter Break when brainstorming ideas for how to reduce waste at St. Margaret’s. With the recent opening of the Tartan Cafe, K-Cups suddenly became a big part of the school’s waste. K-Cups are particularly bad for the environment because of the quantity in which they are consumed, as well as the fact that they are made of single-use plastics, which mostly end up in landfills and take thousands of years to break down.
Now, the club needed to figure out a way to make recycling easy for the SMES community. Nadia has found that, generally, “everyone cares about the environment and wants to have more sustainable habits, but only if those habits are easy to implement and don’t require excessive effort or major lifestyle changes, which is completely understandable.” This is why the K-Cycle boxes work perfectly, we only have to adjust the trajectory of where we are throwing our K-Cup out by about a foot to be more environmentally conscious. Once the K-Cups are collected, Nadia and her team mail the boxes to the headquarters of K-Cycle Recycling Program (supported by Keurig). After Keurig receives a filled box, they separate the contents of the K-Cups into aluminum and plastic to be recycled, and the coffee/tea grounds and filter to compost.
After finalizing this idea, the club worked with Mrs. Allison to purchase the K-Cycle recycling boxes. (The boxes must be paid for because, instead of us having to separate the components of the pods by hand, the company does it). The club then placed boxes and instructional signs in the teacher’s lounge, library, and, of course, the Tartan Cafe. Since the Environmental Club started their K-Cup drive in March, they have collected and mailed 7 K-Cycle boxes, totalling at nearly 3,000 K-Cups recycled! Nadia notes that frictionless changes like this will have the biggest impact on helping SMES become more environmentally-friendly.
Although the Environmental Club intends to continue their K-Cup drive, they are currently working on plans for their next big initiative. Right now, they are considering getting recycled paper for the copy center and our printers. They are also looking into implementing a composting system for the Lower School garden to help younger students develop more awareness about the environment and composting.
Finally, Nadia and her co-founders would like to provide a special thanks to Mrs. Allison, Dr. Graham, and all the other faculty and staff that made the K-Cup drive possible! Also, the club would like to say a huge thank you to all the SMES students who have diligently disposed of their K-Cup by putting it in the K-Cycle box! And a final message from Nadia: “We are so grateful and impressed by your engagement and hope you continue to support the Environmental Club to make SMES more sustainable!” Go Tartans!
Right: Environmental Club logo. Designed by SMES Senior Sabrina Kim.
Read more about the negative impacts of K-Cups on the environment here: https://www.homegrounds.co/k-cup-environmental-impact/
Read more about K-Cycle’s recycling methods here:
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