Sustainable Efforts Throughout the Holiday Season by Piper Anderson

Catalina students love to celebrate the holiday season! They go all out with Kris Kringle traditions, Christmas decorations, and lots of spirit. But what comes along with all of these fun festivities is a lot of waste. Wrapping paper and plastic flood the trash bins at school and linger around the study hall for weeks, even after the holidays. Fortunately, students have taken a solid initiative to promote sustainable and reusable resources to be used throughout the holiday season without taking away from the fun. An interview with Audrey Morrison, the head of R4, which she describes as “the on-campus environmental sustainability club,” dives into some specific actions students take to reuse and recycle this holiday season. Audrey says that R4 annually sends out “sustainable gift ideas and ways to order gifts in sustainable and reusable ways.” Catalina students participate in a Secret Santa activity each year called Kris Kringle. Each student is assigned another student for the week to decorate their desk, make them a baked good, and finally reveal their identities with a gift exchange. Audrey says, “R4 keeps a collection of Kris Kringle decorations to be reused yearly to decrease the amount of waste, specifically plastic being used.” At the end of KK (Kris Kringle) week, “R4 does a food collection of snacks that students won’t eat from their KK desk to donate to decrease the amount of food we waste during the holiday season.” Additionally, besides the fantastic sustainable efforts of R4, students are constantly making announcements to remind everyone that although the holiday season is fun, the waste that comes with it is overwhelming. Therefore, it is important to stay conscious throughout the festive activities. Catalina students do a fantastic job keeping the waste production down even throughout all the chaos of the holiday season!