A Greener College Wood 2013
College Wood Elementary Recycling Club
The College Wood Elementary School Recycling Club promoted and facilitated mixed recycling at their school through an educational campaign and the purchase of seven large, wheeled recycle bins. Through this effort they proudly increased the school’s recycling rates by over 78%!
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The College Wood Elementary School Recycling Club noticed that the school did not have enough recycling containers to hold all of the classroom recyclables; when the club collected recycling bins from classrooms each Friday, the bins were overflowing.
The seven bins were placed in each of the grade level pods and the teacher’s lounge so that classrooms could empty their smaller bins into the larger ones throughout the week.
They noticed a HUGE increase in recycling at their school. The project impacted 735 students and 75 staff members at College Wood Elementary.
After implementing the project, recycling increased from 198 gallons of waste each week to 352 gallons per week. With these new bins in place, and with the hard work of the College Wood Recycling Club students, staff, and volunteers, over one ton of waste was collected during the 6 1/2 week calculation period. Wow!
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To solve this problem and to facilitate easy mixed recycling at their school, the students used their Carmel Green Teen grant to purchase seven 44 gallon blue recycling bins and wheeled dollies.
The College Wood Recycling Club then educated their fellow students about the bins, and switched to emptying the larger blue bins each Friday.
There was so much recycling it was difficult to empty all of the recycling collected within each Friday meeting time. Therefore the custodians and parent volunteers assisted in emptying the bins, which was a change of procedure.
Students were surprised to see how much recyclable waste was collected during the last week of school as students and teachers cleaned out their classrooms. On May 29th alone, they emptied fourteen 44 gallon containers, mostly containing paper. That is 616 gallons of waste, the majority of which would have gone into the trash. Although the students admitted they were pretty overwhelmed by the task, they were so happy to see all that paper, plastic, and aluminum being recycled rather than ending up in the landfill!
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