End-of-Year DP1 Service Field Trip: Trash Talk

Our final DP1 service trip of the year was in May, a welcome break after a busy semester. The whole grade split into different groups with our supervising teachers, Mr. Poulus and Mr. Haji, joining us for a day focused on waste management and recycling.

In our small grade, the faces were all familiar, and we naturally get along pretty well. My group was assigned the task of sorting trash into three categories: plastics, glass, and cans (metal). At first, it seemed like a straightforward task, but as we got into it, we quickly realized how much litter is actually around us. We found all kinds of gross stuff—things you definitely wouldn’t want to touch, even with the single glove each of us was given. The “one glove” situation was pretty funny. We kept switching hands, awkwardly handling trash bags while trying not to touch anything with our bare fingers.

After we collected a decent amount of trash, we headed to a nearby recycling factory to see what would happen next. Watching the process of sorting and recycling was eye-opening. You hear about recycling all the time, but seeing it in action—plastic bottles being shredded and repurposed—gave us a real sense of the scale of the waste problem. The factory, unsurprisingly, didn’t smell great. The bus ride over had already been a challenge, with the smell of the collected trash lingering in the hot air, but at that point, we were all used to it.

The best part of the trip was the banter on the bus. Even though we were sweaty and gross, everyone was in good spirits, waving at each other from different seats and cracking jokes. Dimath and I ended up reminiscing about the “WWW” incident from earlier in the year, which had us laughing the whole ride. It felt like a classic school trip moment, just less glamorous and with way more trash involved.

By the end of the day, we were all exhausted but felt like we’d done something worthwhile. It wasn’t the most exciting activity we’ve ever done, but it was a wake-up call about the waste we produce. It was a satisfying end to our DP1 service projects—dirty gloves, smelly bus rides, and all.