Vancouver Teachers Demand Recycling in Schools

It was a back-flip worthy of the Olympics.

At first, Vancouver School Board Chair Ken Denike said no to teachers insisting that a standard recycling program be set up in all schools across the district. It would be too expensive, he told CBC news on Tues., Sept. 25th. He said recycling in schools was a volunteer effort, although he admitted that it at times deserved a failing grade. "We have attempted in a number of schools to put in a recycling program," Denike said. "But unless you have a diligent teacher there, or someone really pushing it, it doesn't continue."

But here’s what Denike told the CBC the next day: “It’s time to do it.” On Wednesday, Sept. 26th, Denike said, "I think it's important to do it fairly soon while we've got motivation and interest in schools. Students have also been pushing for the change.” He promised that the School Board would review the possibility of a district-wide recycling program.

One teacher who pressured the School Board to organize a standard blue box program is Michelle Tayler, a Grade 4 and 5 teacher at Queen Mary Elementary. Tayler told the CBC that while the curriculum emphasizes environmental education, the School Board is setting a poor example by discouraging students from actually practicing what they've learned. "Just after lunch you'll see a lot of juice boxes — they're thrown into the garbage cans", Tayler told the CBC on Tuesday. "I would have thought by now something would be in place."

Last spring, students from Lord Tennyson Elementary and Lord Byng Secondary made a presentation to Vancouver School Board committees on the topic of recycling and overall sustainability in schools.

Sharon Gregson, the trustee who oversees Lord Byng Secondary School and who last year appeared in the National Firearms Association Journal sporting a gun on the front cover and a tattoo on an inside page, told the CBC that she is keen on recycling. [In fact, after she recycled her husband, Ian Gregson, he accused her in the Apr. 22/05 edition of The Tyee of taking off on vacation to the Dominican Republic with her new boyfriend and saddling him with their joint-custody kids, sabotaging his ability to campaign as a Green Party candidate.]

Gregson told the CBC that it will take time for a standard recycling program to be voted on by the School Board. First funding will have to be found and then the issue will have to be discussed at appropriate committees. Gregson says that the issue of recycling got backgrounded as trustees have been focused on other issues lately, such as “a lack of adequate funding from Victoria, the problem of last year’s lower than expected enrolment, the problem of facilities that need to be seismically upgraded.” She avoided any mention of the international boycott of high school diplomas issued by the VSB, a boycott that the VSB was accused in the media last week of having concealed from the public. The boycott has some Vancouver residents looking to next year's election, when even a new recycling program may not be enough to save this School Board from ending up in electoral landfill. 

For a photo of gun-toting Gregson on the cover of the National Firearms Association Journal and for links to the original CBC articles referred to here, go to Downtown Eastside Enquirer