There’s a movement underway at Highland Park High School to make sure chip bags are recycled properly. Students have setup special bins around the school for disposal and are encouraging their peers to take advantage of the new recycling program. “I really wanted to get involved,” Natalie Oxman, HPHS student, said about why she signed up for the Green School Initiative (GSI) at the beginning of the year. Shortly after, Oxman teamed up with other GSI club members Samantha Shafer and Zacko Brint to develop and promote the chip recycling program. “Once people knew that it was around, most were all for it,” Shafer said. During the week, students dump their chip bags into the bins, which are then collected by GSI students. The trash is sent to TerraCycle. The company provides free waste collection programs for hard to recycle materials. TerraCycle converts the collected waste into a variety of reusable products ranging from park benches to backpacks. For every unit of waste sent in, TerraCycle awards Highland Park High School $.02 to a charity of its choice. GSI students plan to donate the money to an environmental organization at the end of each school year. “We have seen a significant decrease in the number of chip bags thrown away,” Brint said about GSI’s effort. “When you see the quantity of chip bags that we are collecting, you say ‘Wow, why aren’t we doing this everywhere?’” So far this school year, more than 5,000 chip bags have been collected at Highland Park High School.