Students, teachers and staff at the Rochester Memorial Elementary School ranked seventh in the state in the Recycle Bowl, a national contest organized by Keep American Beautiful, Inc., which encourages citizens and especially schools, to recycle.
This was the first year for the contest. Boston came in eigth, after Rochester Elementary. Nationwide, over 1,200 schools, representing 500,000 students entered the contest.
“We collected over 520 pounds of paper, 413 pounds of cardboard and 57 pounds of glass and plastic in only one month,” said Tom Kinsky, a science teacher who was instrumental in getting everyone on board to enter the contest.
“The whole school participates and almost every class and office has a recycle bin, but only the fifth graders wheel the collection cart around and collect the materials,” said Kinsky. “There are also bins in the hallway. The fifth grade classes each have a section of the school assigned to them as their area of responsibility.”
Although the school has been recycling for eight years, this was the first time they kept track of how much was actually being collected. A nurse’s scale was used to weigh each batch of material and the numbers were recorded. A large bag of plastic and metal cans was weighed and used as an average and multiplied by the actual number of bags used.
The contest required the schools to track weight information, by material category and provide the number of teachers, staff and students to calculate a per person ratio to what was recycled. The school has 552 students and 87 teachers and staff, resulting in over two pounds per person, per month being recycled.
“The children take the task seriously and know who is doing what and when…they know that too much goes into the landfill and they feel that they are helping the cause,” said Diane Lagasse, Principal’s Secretay.
According to Kinsky, with approximately ten months in the school year, Rochester Elementary will have recycled over 10,000 pounds of material per year.
“That’s five tons,” said Liam Lynch, who helps in the collection process.
Acceptable items from the cafeteria include steel food cans, No. 1 through No. 7 plastic bottles, glass bottles and jars and aluminum beverage containers. All acceptable paper products include cereal boxes, cardboard, hard and softbound books, magazines, newspapers, office paper and phone books.
“I like pushing the cart…we collect the full bin, leave an empty one and bring the full ones to the recycle area where we recycle it,” said Tyler Kulak, a fifth grader.
“This can all be used again and made into somthing else, and it saves trees,” said Abigal Bergenheim.
Brian Ouellette, Maintenance Supervisor at the school, is very involved in the recycling effort.
“Brian saw that we needed another cart, in addition to the two we had and he welded one together for us,” said Kinsky.
Mr. Ouellette also made a large wood bin for the number of cardboard boxes that need to be flattened and stacked neatly in the recycle area.
“It’s definitely a joint effort on everyone’s part,” Kinsky said.
When asked if the school will enter again next year, Kinsky enthusiastically said they would.
By Joan Hartnett-Barry
