Mount Rumpke is the highest point in Ohio at over 1,000 feet. It hasn’t always been there. This is no purple mountain’s majesty…it’s garbage.

Mountains similar to Mount Rumpke could end up consuming America. According to enotes.com, each American produces about 230 million tons of refuse a year. An average suburban family of three can generate 40 pounds of garbage weekly. Studies such as these show the importance of recycling.

Science teacher Keith Clements said he would recycle if he knew of a place in Seminole that would take it.

“It would be convenient enough that I would do it,” Clements said. “I just don’t know of a close place.”

Clements said recycling in Seminole isn’t popular because it’s easier to just throw it away.

“Everyone [in Seminole] has dumpsters behind their house,” Clements said. “So, most people don’t recycle here. We had to recycle in Fort Worth. If we didn’t, we were given a fine.”

Senior Marcos Iglesias recycles metal, cardboard and glass. Iglesias found perks to recycling.

“I like recycling metal better than anything else because I get money for it,” Iglesias said. “I got about $30 for around 50 pounds of metal.”

Iglesias takes his recyclables to The Waste Management in Hobbs, N.M.

“They have all the separate receptacles for the different things you have to recycle,” Iglesias said.

A few recycling facilities near Seminole include Waste Management in Hobbs, Hobbs Recycling Center, Andrews Recycling Center.

The Andrews Recycling Center was started by a group of students at Andrews High School in Future Problem Solvers. Senior Andrews High School student Ruby Flores is the Chairman of the recycling project.

“It was a lot of research when we were starting out,” Flores said. “I started talking to Ms. Tochterman about it. She said it would be fun to get a lot of girls involved with it.”

Flores was looking for an extracurricular activity to be involved in. Flores started seeing the benefits soon after she got involved.

“I learned that we had an overused landfill,” Flores said. “We had to spend money to get some of the trash sent to Penwell.”

Flores said she didn’t want people to think Andrews was an ugly town because of the amount of litter.

“You could see plastic bags and cardboard everywhere,” Flores said. “We wanted people to drive through Andrews and say ‘What a beautiful community’.”

Like Flores, Iglesias said he started seeing the benefits of recycling.

“I think recycling is important in some ways,” Iglesias said. “Instead of making more, why not reuse what we already have?”

Sophomore Alexis Hastings and her family recycle cans, glass bottles, plastic containers and occasionally rubber.

“If we have to trim or cut down a tree, we use the wood instead of letting it go in the landfill,” Hastings said. “We recycle every day.”

Hastings said recycling is more organized when done correctly.

“I think it’s a lot easier to recycle,” Hastings said. “You don’t have to take your trash out as often because it doesn’t fill up as fast.”

According to www.recycling-revolution.com, “Well-run recycling programs cost less to operate than waste collection, landfilling, and incineration. The more people recycle, the cheaper it gets.”

Everyday items which could be recycled go wasted.

“Forests are being cut and trees are being felled at an unimaginable rate of 100 acres per minute,” www.all-recycling-facts.com/recycling-statistics.html said. “All this to produce paper which is normally used and disposed of without much thought.”

Pushinggreen.com is a contest for recycling. It challenges individuals to create a team and begin earning points. For every recycling action done, the team earns points. The winner of the contest will have energy bills paid for a month.

Pushinggreen.com suggests carpooling to work or school, reducing the temperature of water heaters by 20 degrees, replacing 10 old light bulbs with energy saving compact fluorescents (CFL’s), lowering heat by three degrees, using cold water for rinsing and most other washing cycles, washing only full loads of dishes, defrosting your freezer, powering down your computer at night, unplugging your electronics, reusing your plastic water bottles, recycling aluminum cans, reusing glass containers and taking old electronics to proper recycling facilities.

Tips on how to recycle, what to recycle, and how to save money can be found on pushinggreen.com. Using these tips could make sights like Mount Rumpke vanishing examples of what can happen if recycling is absent.

“Have you seen our landfill?” Hastings said. “It’s gross and dirty and pretty soon, we’ll be able to see all the tras