When walking back from my car to the school after lunch, I am greeted by the senior parking lot trashcans that are overflowing with Burger King soda cups, brown paper bags, french fry holders, ZipLock bags, chip bags, and plastic Playa Bowls. Students kick the trash all over the floor spreading it onto the grass. Wind takes plastic water bottles, Starbucks cups, and Dunkin cups to the parking lot where they get run over by cars.

The seniors and juniors of Wayne Hills are the culprits of this mess. Ironically, they are the upperclassmen in the school, yet they do not know how to properly dispose of their trash, something learned in the first grade. It seems that they cannot comprehend that when a trash can is full, more should not be stuffed inside or placed on top of the trashcan. There are multiple bins within the school, but I assume an empty McDonald’s plastic cup is too heavy for them to carry an extra few steps. On the other hand, maybe it is attributed to something with their inflated egos. “I’m a senior/junior now. The rules don’t apply to me anymore cause I have seniority!”

Obviously, I am making excuses for them at this point. I would like to think almost everyone attending Wayne Hills has basic human decency and consiousness. It really is dissapointing that most of my peers have been inattentively throwing their trash away, without thinking about the consequences of their actions.

Senior Editor Eunho Jung expressed her disgust: ““I think it’s really despicable to throw out your trash in the senior lot because you are running late. At the end of the day, the janitors and custodians are the ones that have to clean up the mess, not the students. There are trash cans for a reason. Use them!”

Our students’ conduct reveals a bigger problem faced in Wayne, in New Jersey, in North America, and the rest of the world. Municipal solid waste had 14.5 million tons of plastic waste in 2018 in the United States according to the Environmental Protection Agency.  Single-use plastic, something many of us use when eating out for lunch, are used for around 15-20 minutes, then last for hundreds of years in landfills. This is something not easily grasped by many people due to how landfills are rarely shown to the public eye; people do not feel the consequences of their actions. If Wayne were to have a law where any trash has to stay with the person who generated it, the citizens of this town would have an uproar and/or completely change their ways.

Overall, my takeaway from seeing the carelessness of the trash disposal from Wayne Hills students is dissapointment, but not discouragement. We are still so young and can easily change our ways. Afterall, our future is most affected by disregard of the planet and I wish my peers would realize this. But for now, hopefully they can still remember the three R’s from elementary school.