You approach a round table coated with a layer of sticky smelly soda, topped with crumbs of leftover food. You wish you could help and remove the filth from the table, but it’s simply too disgusting to touch. Unfortunately, I am not talking about a wasteland or dump, I am simply describing de Toledo High School.

Trash is an epidemic at this school. Every faculty member at every town hall and Tefillah has told us that we need to be picking up this waste, so why is it not happening? It is ridiculous to believe that students at our school care so little for this campus that has been my home for the past three years.

Think of one of the most respected places on earth, like the White House, the Western Wall, or even the Taj Mahal. You won’t walk onto these sites and leave your Arizona can on the floor, or dump the remains of a turkey sandwich your mom made onto the carpet. In these places you are respectful and throw your trash away, or you don’t even create trash in the first place. Why is our school any different?

I don’t care what de Toledo is to you, but for me, it is the environment in which I have grown into the person that I am today. This campus has formed my identity and has created a safe place I can always return to. My time here will remain in my heart forever, and I don’t want my last impression of this school to be that the students don’t even care enough to even clean up.

Jared Shapiro, a senior, is against all of the trash present on campus: “Every time I see trash it makes me very mad because I don’t like to see our school in that way.”

It is a known fact at our school that we have an incredible maintenance staff that works extremely hard to keep our campus as clean as possible. If you haven’t noticed, every morning, the school is as good as new without a stain on the carpet or a single piece of paper towel on the bathroom floors. By the end of the day, it seems as if wild pigs had run wild through the halls creating chaos. Just because we have a maintenance staff doesn’t mean you can stop cleaning up after yourself.

Noa Getzug, a Senior, thinks “that the trash represents the entitlement most students at this school feel. Most kids think that they can do whatever they want because there is maintenance staff.”

It gets tiring for teachers to continue to remind students to pick after themselves, and they don’t want to seem annoying or repetitive so they simply just stop. A teacher’s job is to teach and inspire teenagers to be changemakers in our world, not to be nagging about the hygiene of our campus. A group of 14-18 year olds should be capable of keeping a not-so-large area clean.

So what can be a possible solution to this problem? Clean up your trash. Clean up your trash. Clean up your trash. You shouldn’t get a prize or be rewarded for picking up trash because this is something you should always be doing.

Another senior at our school, Becca Goldman says, “It is really easy to just pick up whatever trash you have and throw it away. It takes zero effort clean up after yourself, so I don’t understand why it’s not happening.”

I am not exempt from this problem. I hate to admit it, but there have been times I have left trash at my table or forgot to throw away a wrapper or two. What makes me different from the rest, however, is I am really trying to correct my errors. From the beginning of senior year until I graduate high school, I have made it my personal goal to pick up not only my trash, but every single piece of trash I see. If everyone were to do this, our school would be a happier, healthier, and cleaner environment.

Trash. Garbage. Refuse. Waste. Litter. Junk. Debris. Detritus. Rubbish. Whatever you call it: pick it up and make our school the best it can be.