Over chicken nuggets and milk cartons, students at Clarksville Elementary School spent their lunch time Wednesday, Nov. 30 learning about recycling — and just what happens to that milk carton when it's recycled.
The information came from Alicia Moore, recycling coordinator in the Howard County Department of Public Works, who spoke to students on a Waste-Free Wednesday about how, and why, to recycle.
"What do we have in our lunch boxes today, and every day, that can be recycled?" Moore asked second-graders. "I see lots of milk cartons, lots of juice boxes, lots of yogurt cups and applesauce. These can all be recycled."
The recycling bin is right next to the trash can, Moore said, making it extra-easy for students to recycle.
"Should I put trash in the recycling bin?" she asked students.
The response was a loud, long, "no," from the second-graders.
"This gets them thinking about their own lunch, long before the cleaning up," Moore said afterward. "It takes time to get into a routine, but it does become second nature."
Moore told students that much of what they recycled could be transformed into new items, like toys, a sweater or a carpet.
"So that's why we recycle," said Phoebe Island, 7. "So people can have new things."
What actually happens to recycled goods was news to many students.
"Maybe it used to be plastic straws, or bottles and toys," said Bentley Wang, 7, who was showing off his recycled plastic pencil box. "It was definitely lots of plastic. I like it cause it's rainbow-y."
For Lauren Choi, 7, recycling meant a chance to keep landfills from overflowing.
"This stuff would pile up and up in landfills," she said. "Now we'll have more space, more areas where they could use for parks, or stores we could get food from."
Some of the students already recycle at home, said Andrea Levinson, co-chairwoman of the school's PTA Go-Green Committee, while others were learning about recycling for the first time.
"This is hands-on, this is engaging," she said. "We've been trying to find as many ways as possible to embrace being green at all ages. …. When kids learn, they can speak up and help their parents, who maybe have never done it before. Kids care more."
Recycling practices differ at every school in the county, Moore said, and each school faces different challenges in going green. Each school, she said, has to find out what works best for them.
At Clarksville, which was certified by the state as a Green School in 2010, what works best is recycling during lunches at every grade level and Waste-Free Wednesdays, said Hilary Becker, the third-grade teacher who spearheaded many of the green initiatives at the school.
"It's about making the least amount of trash as possible, with reusable lunch boxes, bottles, plastic containers. If the whole lunch room creates no trash, that's 100 kids a grade, that's something."
. Staff at the school is working on phasing in Trash-Free Tuesdays as well, Becker said. Ideally, she said, the school wanted to reduce trash output every day of the week.
"They're going to be taking over for us one day," Becker said. "Their world will be so much better for the next generation."