South Side Story

The South High Lorax Environmental Club held a drive last week to collect used athletic shoes so that the shoes could be donated to charities rather than thrown away.

Senior Kristin Anderson, who has been a member of the Lorax Club for three years, said that the idea of a shoe drive originated earlier, but how the club would dispose of the shoes was different.

“We wanted to recycle a bunch a shoes but we found out that we couldn’t recycle them because they don’t a place to do it in Alaska. We still wanted to do the shoe drive so we decided to donate the shoes to charity instead,” Anderson said.

Though the good intension of the club was there, Anderson admitted that it wasn’t the most popular fundraiser, with it only collecting a couple pairs of shoes, two of which Anderson donated herself.

“I heard about the drive and saw them collecting by the elevator but I didn’t donate any shoes,” sophomore Jack Novak said.

Its comments and results like this that make Lorax Club advisor Jamie Shearer believe even more that it’s important to raise awareness about the consequences human life is having on the earth.

“The problems related to the environment such as over consumption, global warming, resource depletion, etc. are not going to go away,” Shearer said.

Luckily Anderson, Shearer and the rest of the Lorax Club have more planned to get this awareness out there. Specifically they are focusing on getting Greenware, or a more “green” alternative to styrofoam, into to the school cafeterias.

“A petition was written, signatures gathered and now we are waiting on the next step – getting support from schools across Anchorage before bringing the issue before the District Administration,” Shearer said.

Shearer said that this district wide petition is a big step for a club that started as a way to get a recycling program started in South Anchorage High School but after it accomplished that, the club has slowly evolved into an instrument for environmental change in both the high school and the community.