Students in Schuylkill County celebrated Earth Day by cleaning up and starting a community vegetable garden.
Thirteen school districts participated in the Schuylkill Technology Center’s third annual Schuylkill County Cleanup Competition. Each school had nine students and cleaned areas in their district with excessive litter or illegal dumping for three hours. They took several pictures throughout the day for the judges. The winner received a trophy made by students at STC. Each item on the trophy represented a different shop at the school. It will remain at the winning school until next year’s competition.
The annual event was started by STC students as part of their project at the Schuylkill County Youth Summit. The trash will be collected by the state Department of Transportation. Following the morning cleanups, lunch and the award presentation was held at the STC-South Campus, Mar Lin.
Tamaqua Area High School took home the trophy this year for their work in cleaning up the hill near its football stadium.
Gary Hess, the school’s youth summit adviser and history teacher, told the students that he hopes they now realize that litter doesn’t go away.
“It’s going to be there until someone like you picks it up,” he said.
Schuylkill Keep It Pretty Executive Director Darlene D. Dolzani said it is refreshing to see the youth getting involved in cleaning up the county.
“Litter is always going to be a problem and it’s nice to know that the kids in the county want to do something about it,” she said.
Braenden Mackereth, who was one of the lead organizers, Mikayla Fazio and Zakery Dayson were some of the students from STC-South who cleaned up along Peach Mountain Road. They found tires, wood, mattresses, sinks, televisions, computers and bottles.
“It looks like someone demolished a house there,” Dayson said.
“I think it was important that we really got to see how bad it gets and to do something about it,” Fazio said.
“It’s important to get the young people to help out in the county,” Dayson said. “The amount of trash around here is unbelievable and anything we can do helps.”
On the McCann School of Business & Technology campus in Pottsville, students cleaned up a neglected green space in the parking lot with the goal of turning it into a community vegetable garden.
“To celebrate Earth Day, we decided to clean this up,” Cheryl Gustitus, environmental science instructor at McCann, said. “We thought this needed some work so why not have the students plant vegetables.”
Gustitus said an organic farmer spoke to her class about the benefits of organic produce and the students wanted it to be available to everyone. That class also made a list of recommendations to make the campus more environmentally friendly, which included planting a vegetable garden.
“It’s a great idea and we absolutely have the space,” Shannon Brennan, campus director, said.
Although Gustitus said it is still too early to plant vegetables, it gives the students enough time to raise funds for the soil and other things still needed for the garden. She also said that even though many of the students are not majoring in environmental science, the experience is still a learning opportunity for them.
“It might not apply to their majors, but it applies to their personal lives,” Gustitus said.
Patrice Denosiers, Mount Carmel, a phlebotomy student at McCann, said she enjoyed gardening growing up, but now she doesn’t have the opportunity to grow vegetables at home.
“I think this is great,” she said. “It helps the environment and it also brings vegetables, things you can sue. And it’s a fun project.”
The plants that were removed from the garden will be replanted on the campus or the students took them home to replant.