January 7, 2009

Three Village School District’s RC Murphy Jr. High School should be especially proud of one of its eighth grade students who is helping the environment in a meaningful way. Check out Ashley Nesenoff’s web site www.yourethink.com where she features the exchange of reduce, reuse and recycling ideas through her organization, Long Island Go Green Campaign. Her message: “All you have to do reuse, reduce, recycle, but most importantly, you must RETHINK.”

Ashley introduced herself to me recently after arranging for Lowe’s to donate broken tile to the Materials Resource Center in Ronkonkoma instead of disposal. She recognized that students and others get creative with tile and thought that we would take it. Since MRC is a nonprofit clearinghouse for scrap and surplus materials that would otherwise be discarded, she saw the match and made the connection.

RC Murphy plays a role in steering Ashley’s interest in recycling and reuse because for years it’s been an active member of MRC, where its teachers obtain hands-on reclaimed materials for their classrooms. And, along with the materials goes the recognition that all this stuff would have been landfilled had it not been for MRC and the commitment of the school and the Three Village School District. We salute Ashley and her school for recognizing that today’s teens must save the environment—this ailing one they didn’t make.