The Earth Month Challenge, set up by USAgain, is underway and Oak Park High School is participating. This event began on April 1 and lasts until April 30. Schools compete in a national clothes and shoe drive contest and schools can win prizes for collecting the most donations.

Usagain has bins on all OPUSD campuses which allows the community to recycle clothing, textiles and shoes properly and during the month of April, OPHS is participating in the challenge. This event was coordinated by Oak Park Unified School District’s Environmental Education and Awareness Committee and they are advertising it to help raise funds for the school. 

“The apparel industry is one of the biggest polluters in the planet! According to [the] N[atural] R[esources] D[efense] C[ouncil], textile mills generate one-fifth of the world’s industrial water pollution and use 20,000 chemicals, many of them carcinogenic, to make clothes,” the USAgain website writes.

To participate in this fundraiser, you can drop off used clothes, shoes or textiles in the USAgain bins at OPHS. For every TreeMachine bin filled, USAgain plants a tree.

For more information and a list of accepted items, check out the USAgain website.

“We think that all of our students should be aware of their impact on the environment and that they try to reduce their impact as much as possible to be friendly to the Earth,” Chairperson of OPUSD’s EEAC Keyla Treitman said. “Every citizen should be an environmental steward, where you take care of the Earth because it takes care of you.