“I believe there were two trash cans this morning. I’m like 98% sure.”
Mr. John Mickelson, a math teacher, had just agreed to step into the hallway for a quick interview about a peculiar situation that had been unfolding across ETHS for the better part of two weeks. Sometime in late January, nearly every classroom in the building had all but one of its trash cans removed, leaving teachers confused, frustrated, and largely in the dark about why. Mickelson, however, seemed entirely unbothered when we approached him, apparently confident the whole thing had missed his classroom in N315.
After we explained the situation, he laughed, looked skeptical, then leaned back into his room to investigate. He emerged back into the hallway moments later with a wide grin. Sure enough, one of his trash bins was gone, and he only realized it now.
His reaction, somewhere between amusement and disbelief, was a fairly representative snapshot of how most of the ETHS faculty seemed to feel about the whole thing.
The science and arts wings, however, told a different story. Teachers in lab and project-based courses like ceramics and metal sculpture generate considerable material waste by nature, and frustrations in those hallways ran noticeably higher. The full extent of the disruption in the arts wing remains unclear to the Evanstonian, though the science wing had the most concrete and vocal objections.
Our inquiry into the matter began after tips came into our headquarters in H206 from teachers across departments, all reporting the same thing: their trash cans were gone, and nobody had told them why. No email, no announcement, no note left behind. The removals appear to have taken place during the final days of January and the first few days of February.
Across the school, and more specifically within the science department, teachers were piecing together what had happened. Ms. Ellen Fierer, who teaches AP Environmental Studies among other science courses, seemed to have more context than most.
“The idea was to reduce plastic waste,” she explained. “The janitors had to remove can liners from so many different garbage cans, and those cans were never full. But they can’t really leave them, because if there’s food, it’s a pest problem. So [the administration] saw that the excess trash cans in a room are redundant, and if you minimize the number, there’ll be less liners, less plastic waste, and it’ll save the school money.”
Her grievance was never with the goal itself. It was with the execution, and specifically with what she described as a failure to account for the fundamental distinction between a standard classroom and a science lab.
“It makes sense that maybe a physics class, a math class, or an English class might only need one trash can,” Fierer said, “but for a laboratory like mine, we utilize multiple trash cans. We have sinks. It’s a different kind of situation, and [the administration] didn’t really check in with the science department to see what the minimum was that you could do without. They just took all of the extra ones and left [us] with just one.”
“They also took my extra recycling bins,” she added.
One biology teacher whose classes were mid-project when the cans vanished came in Monday to find some of her rooms stripped entirely. Her students had been building 3D cell models using glitter, pipe cleaners, and sparklers, and with nowhere to put the waste, the disruption was tangible and, as she put it, “made my job harder.”
A contingent of frustrated science teachers subsequently spearheaded a formal request to have some of their bins restored. As of late February, it remains unclear to The Evanstonian whether that request has been fulfilled in any meaningful way.
It is worth noting that several faculty members told The Evanstonian that the school had, in fact, sent an email to staff prior to the removals. Some teachers said the notice was buried in an email regarding a lot of information not relating to trash cans. However, the overwhelming majority of teachers said they received nothing.
We brought the matter to Superintendent Dr. Campbell, who had heard rumblings but was short on specifics. He confirmed that the school’s sustainability coordinator had worked with students on the effort.
“We go through an insane number of garbage bags each year,” Campbell said. “I didn’t know anything about it until people started emailing my team, but something needed to be done about that.”
Further reporting revealed that a newly formed student club was the primary catalyst behind the project. John Lydon, Desmond Israelite and Will Valko, all seniors, co-founded the club with the mission of uniting ETHS environmental organizations and turning collaborative ideas into action. Lydon serves as president, Israelite as vice president, and Valko as the third co-founder.
For their first project, the club set their sights on the garbage bins. They never anticipated how controversial it would so quickly become.
Most classrooms and offices had two or more trash cans when they only needed one, forcing custodial staff to swap out liners in every can, every single day regardless of use. The club calculated this was generating over 60,000 wasted plastic bags annually, and estimated that consolidating to one bin per room would cut that by roughly 300 bags per day. It is worth noting that the project also intended to save the school large amounts of money on trash bags. The project was executed in collaboration with Head of Operations Mr. John Crawford, the Community Service Club, and Etown Sunrise, with custodial staff consulted throughout.
“Despite complaints from faculty, we know this project was beneficial,” Israelite said, “and we can prove it by two ways: by asking our janitors, who now only have to take one plastic bag out of each classroom, and by observing the significant decrease in plastic bag waste throughout the rest of the year.”
The club has been clear that this was never meant to be a finished solution, just a first step toward a broader transformation of the environmental culture at ETHS. Whether the faculty comes around, whether the bins come back, and whether the bags actually get saved remain questions only time will answer.
As for Mr. Mickelson, he still has his one remaining trash can. He checks on it occasionally. He’s about 98% sure it’s still there.
