Maize has been taking multiple steps to becoming a greener school over the past couple of years; one of the main projects students may have noticed is the Solar Initiative that was just finalized over the summer. The most recent step in going green has been changing silverware in the cafeteria from plastic to metal. 

Stan Bergkamp, a science teacher at Maize, is the man behind the change. 

“I just find it incorrigible that we would put a 720 solar panel system out there, but yet, we’re not smart enough to not throw away the silverware,” Bergkamp said.

Sophomore Sebastian Castillo has been using the new school silverware with his lunch since the change. Castillo said the change overall has been positive.

“I think it’s a great system, because it’s helping out the environment, and so we don’t have to throw out plastic all the time,” Castillo said. “We just have to rewash it.”

Maize has to provide many school lunches. Along with those lunches came plastic forks and spoons that many students used. With the new silverware, the amount of plastic saved is extreme.

“It was literally a 1000 pieces a day,” Bergkamp said. “So if you do the math, you know, so far, it’s day eight, so we’ve saved about 8000 pieces of plastic.”

The money for the silverware was donated by groups from Maize. Bergkamp hopes this will encourage the student body to not throw them away if it was paid for by Maize groups. Bergkamp also emphasized the pride he has in our school for taking a greener step forward.

“I mean, just congratulations to the student body of maize high school for caring enough to not throw away the silverware,” Bergkamp said.