Grad Night is an exciting opportunity to celebrate the end of senior year and the high school experience. But there’s a lot that goes into making Grad Night the big deal that it is. Particularly, the funding. In addition to the admission ticket price, money is an important part of the set up. Most of these funds come from donations and fundraisers.

On Saturday, October 20, YLHS will be hosting an E-Waste fundraiser, all proceeds going towards making Grad Night special for the 2019 seniors.

It will be located in the senior parking lot at school from 9AM- 1PM. E-Waste, or electronic waste, such as televisions, laptops, old (and new) cell phones, monitors, tablets, printers, and cables and wires will all be accepted as donations. Batteries, however, will not be allowed.

Mr. Walls (staff), the AP Environmental Science, or APES, teacher at YLHS teaches about E-Waste and how it affects the environment when disposed of in his course. “I think E-Waste is a great way for places to earn money because it doesn’t involve a lot of work for people. All they have to do is bring in their old phones or computers and they get money for the school! And I think that’s great!”

But even if money can be raised from these donations, E-Waste can cause harm to the environment and the people who live off the affected area. “Some of it goes overseas to other countries that don’t have such stringent laws,” states Mr. Walls. “And small children are going to be handling the E-Waste, and they’re more likely to get cancer from it. [But if it goes] to a nice facility that handles the arsenic, the lead, the cadmium, and the mercury, then I’m all for it. Either way, it’s better than just throwing it in the trash and having it be delivered to the Brea Landfill, which would pollute our waterway. I think it’s a great way to earn money so we don’t have to pay for Grad Night in full!”

The event will be hosted by All Green Recycling in Tustin. They specialize in disposing E-Waste and making sure that it doesn’t simply end up in a landfill or in the hands of a child as Mr. Walls explained. Their greatest concern is making sure that the Earth is not harmed in the process of recycling any of the waste.

At the fundraiser, All Green Recycling will also be offering a data destruction service for the donations that still have data on them. This includes hard drive shredding, data wiping, media degaussing, which completely erases the data on the hard drive and any media it was connect to, and media shredding.

Come down to the Senior Lot on the twentieth and support your senior class so they can have a great Grad Night! To donate to Grad Night, you can visit the website.