OKC Schools: no recycling program

By John Sutter

Oklahoma City public schools don't have a standard recycling program, and only about half of the district's schools do any recycling at all. In my article in this week's Oklahoma Gazette, I met up with some high school students at Northwest Classen who started an environmental club called the Green Knights (here's their Web site). A faculty member drives the plastic bottles they collect to Edmond so they can be recycled--since the city doesn't have a system set up for them. Oklahoma City recycling trucks pass by the school every week, but the municipal recycling program only covers residences, not schools or businesses.

Here's a video interview with one of the students at Northwest Classen:

State to clean up (just of few) diesel buses

By John Sutter

I wrote a story in last week's Oklahoma Gazette about Oklahoma's efforts to clean up some of its dirty diesel school buses. The exhaust from the buses exacerbates asthma and could cause cancer, yet most of Oklahoma City's buses follow old standards and none have been upgraded so that they're healthier for kids -- at least not yet.

Check out the full story here.

And here's a video of a state Department of Environmental Quality staffer explaining a new federal grant program that is expected to clean up some of the emissions, making some kids' lungs a little less sooty: