I love EarthForce. Every Friday after school, the dedicated students in the club spend hours sorting through your trash and recycling. It is not an easy job; we all know how much junk ends up in the recycling bin. EarthForce dedicates real time to making real change in our community and I think it deserves real recognition.
It seems like every other day that some club at Marshall is raising awareness or fundraising or soliciting donations. But how many of those activities are done for a grade in a class, for admission to a tournament or with some other ulterior motive?
EarthForce is different. On Fridays when I stay late for practice or for newspaper, EarthForce is always keeping us company. Its members can be heard moving down every hall and dumping hundreds of cans, bottles and reams of paper into their respective bins.
They show up every Friday for the experience of asking teachers if they are done with their recycle bins. There are many things I would rather do than sort out a recycling bin with who-knows-what in it. But, Earthforce members show up tirelessly and always seem to have fun doing it.
I think it is because they actually believe in what they do. EarthForce members are rare examples of high school students who do something they really believe in without needing praise or glorifying what they do. EarthForce does not have high profile events that everyone knows about. Instead, members dedicate a couple of hours of their weekend to collecting white paper for the school to recycle. Not only is the club doing work that nobody can expect them to do, but it is doing it without recognition.
And what are the effects of EarthForce’s work? The school makes money. The club picks up and sorts our white paper to sell to recyclers. Now I think that FCPS should be doing this on its own, but it does not; EarthForce does. And, the environment wins as well. If you could not tell from the name, EarthForce does what it does to help reduce the effect our waste has for Mother Earth.
So if you are wandering the halls after school on some Friday afternoon in the future, I think you should say thank you to the EarthForce members that you see carrying your recycling in bags down the hall.