E-Waste recycling event set for Saturday

Club aims to raise funds for trash cans at LJH

By Katie Cicchetto and Laura Decorte

Interns

The Clean Campus Club at La Jolla High School is hosting its second electronics recycling event from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday.

Last year, the event was such a success that three truckloads of recycled material were collected, said Claire Mittermiller, a senior who is heading up the project,

The E-Waste Green nonprofit organization is cooperating with the Clean Campus Club, helping with publicity and recruit volunteers.

Claire explains their club’s hope is to raise enough money to buy new trash cans for the La Jolla High School campus.

Sea gulls currently extract the trash and spread its contents across the school grounds.

The new trash cans, which the club hopes to buy, have a spring door to prevent sea gulls from withdrawing trash.

The idea for the E-Waste recycling event at LJHS came from Bee Mittermiller, the previous PTA President. She heard about the Surfrider Foundation’s successful recycling event with E-Waste Green since she was on their contact list. Mittermiller said she realized this was a perfect opportunity to promote recycling at LJHS, so she contacted Ron LaChance from E-Waste Green.

Together, with the approval of LJHS Principal Dana Shelburne, the PTA hosted their first recycling event last May.

Mittermiller’s daughter, Claire, picked up on the idea and drafted the Clean Campus Club to help. Claire became president of the club when the founder, her older brother, graduated.

Presently, Claire is leading the Clean Campus Club in attending the school’s sports games to pick up waste recycling left by spectators, in order to promote the club’s mission.

The club advertises events by asking businesses to hang the club’s fliers in their window, or in the back room of the store.

“We need critical mass to make it effective,” Bee Mittermiller said.

La Jolla High School also shares the word via e-mail to the PTA from Torrey Pines, Bird Rock, Muirlands and La Jolla.

“We’re not getting a whole lot of money out of this, but we are doing what we can to help the environment,” Bee Mittermiller added.

If you go

La Jolla High lower parking lot on Westbourne Street, off Draper Avenue

Accepted items include computers, monitors, laptops, TVs, printers, cell phones, fax machines, VCRs, DVD players, stereos, cameras, scanners.

Not accepted: Appliances and batteries