Deputy Principal

Whose Job Is It Anyway?

I was sitting in the Wellbeing Team meeting this week and we were having a discussion around litter in the school. A few days earlier, I had the opportunity to accompany some of our young men on a walk around the school grounds picking up rubbish for two hours. As I have reminded the students on a number of occasions, I have never worked in a school that has more rubbish bins than St Patrick’s College. Yet, we still have the problem of litter being left everywhere. In fact, we have the problem of no one taking ownership of the rubbish they leave behind them every day.

The students I had the pleasure of accompanying could not believe how much rubbish was left behind around the College grounds. They said to me, “why don’t you get the year groups responsible back to clean up after themselves?”. I have also heard other students say, “well that is why the school has cleaners”. In the Wellbeing meeting, as we were discussing it, a member of staff said they were sick and tired of us telling entire year groups that it is their responsibility to clean up the mess, and that it is up to the individual who left the rubbish behind - I cannot help but agree. The issue is that we have a lot of individuals who take no responsibility for the environment in which we live in as a school community. 

I am sure that these individuals who are responsible for throwing rubbish into the hedges or the gardens rather than putting it in the bin are the same individuals who find bins when they are out in public and do not just throw rubbish in the street or in parks. Pope Francis in his encyclical Laudato si' – Care for our Common Home, lamented the way we treat our environment and the environmental degradation that we cause on a daily basis. While it is up to individuals to act, it is collectively our responsibility to ensure that we do better and do something as simple as place our rubbish in the bin. It seems ridiculous to me that we have to remind our students that putting rubbish in the bin is the right thing to do. It should be innate in all of us to do the right thing. 

As a community we need to have discussions in our homes with our children about what is right and wrong and taking care of our common home needs to form part of the discussion. So, to answer the initial question posed? It is up to every individual to take accountability for their own rubbish. We must challenge those around us to do better. 

Whose job is it anyway? It is each one of us.

Adrian Byrne

Deputy Principal