Teens at both Lawrence high schools are showing this week that you don’t have to be an adult to improve the world.

Free State High School juniors Yuan Liu and Marie Hull are encouraging their peers to recycle with the “Black and White and Read All Over” Recycling Challenge, and Lawrence High senior Katy Seibel is raising funds to reinstate a recycling program at her school. She founded the Lawrence High School Environment Club to run the program.

“The destruction of the environment is one of the most pressing issues facing our generation,” Seibel said. “It’s our responsibility to change some of the mistakes that have been made and to change our lifestyles.”

Neither school has a school-sponsored recycling program. Lawrence High School did recycle cans and bottles, but several years ago the program was discontinued, Seibel said, because leaking recycling containers posed a health risk.

Free State has two service organizations that run recycling efforts within the school, Liu said. The biology club recycles cans, and the special education program runs a white paper recycling program.

But Liu said that recycling efforts were far below those at her hometown of Fayetteville, Ark.

“I thought it was a big change when I came here,” she said. “We agreed that since newspaper is so easy to recycle, it’s ridiculous not to do it.”

She and Hull planned the weeklong challenge to motivate students into recycling. They have decorated 20 boxes donated from Kinko’s and will place them throughout the building to collect more than 200 newspapers that pass through the school each day.

The two also will place brochures and posters around the school, giving information, such as recycling 1 ton of newspaper saves 17 40-foot Douglas fir trees, 60 pounds of air pollutants and 7,000 gallons of water. Wal-Mart donated $500 for the project, which Hull said would help the program’s effects last longer than the week newspapers will be recycled.

High school students want to motivate their classmates to get involved in recycling this week in conjunction with Earth Day on Thursday, including the Black

“The idea is that we want to get a bunch of people to do it all the time,” she said. “We’d like people to have better recycling awareness.”

At the end of the week, Lawrence Waste Reduction and Recycling will weigh the papers for a grand total of newspapers saved and recycle them.

At Lawrence High, Seibel began a club just to address recycling. She is working on recruiting a group of students willing to take recycling receptacles to Wal-Mart regularly so the program does not add additional burden to an already taxed janitorial staff.

She also is raising money to buy quality recycling containers. She said containers that would not leak cost as much as $70 apiece. She received a $140 grant from Lion Pride for the project, and the school’s student council matched with another $140. To donate to the program, contact Seibel at katyseibel@hotmail.com.

There are many other ways that teenagers can help the environment, said Mary Olive, coordinator of the Roger Hill Volunteer Center’s Youth Council. Olive helped Liu and Hull begin their program.

“The majority of the issue is giving teens the power to do it,” she said. “Saying, ‘I believe in you and here’s how I can help you make this happen.'”

She said the city worked with the volunteer center to keep a list of ideas at www.ci.lawrence.ks.us/volunteer_center/whatsnew.html. Those interested also can join the Youth Volunteer Council by calling Olive at 865-5030.