On Monday, Earth Task Force (ETF) held a contest, called ”Trashy” Halloween, to raise awareness about upcycling, recycling, and reuse. Each advisory classroom was required to make a costume made only of recycled materials with an environmental theme. They then competed to see who had the best and most creative costume the day of Halloween. The costumes were judged on creativity, how clear and accurate the theme to the costume was, and attractiveness.

ETF did this so the school could understand more about recycling and be hands on with it, while also having some holiday fun. Afterwards, when announcing the winner, ETF also explained more about recycling and how it works. They showed a video they made to the whole school about ETF’s recent field trip  to the Boulder County Recycling Center. It showed what the inside of the center looked like and how the workers did their jobs. The video also taught about a few things that are recyclable and what happens to those things when they’re recycled. For example, tin foil could be recycled, but only if it is balled up before-hand. The workers have to manually sort the recycled materials, and could accidently put tin foil into the cardboard pile because they are both flat. It helps the workers if the tin foil is balled up so they could sort the recycled materials better.

Overall, “Trashy” Halloween went extremely well. Every advisory had amazing costumes and put obvious effort into them. The winner of the contest was Hunter’s advisory with their costume about climate change. The whole school was involved, but ETF were the ones who constructed the whole event and helped it come alive. Now, the students of the school are  more aware about recycling and looking forward to doing the same event next year.

Written by:  ETF Student Jessie Steele

About Earth Task Force:

The Earth Task Force (ETF) is a Cottonwood Institute-supported program at New Vista High School in Boulder, CO designed to give students an opportunity to take the lead to implement sustainability initiatives at their school.