Delta Elementary School Recycling Challenge
Meet the kids from the Pebble Hill Elementary Green Team who emerged as the winners of our Delta Elementary Recycling Challenge. They got to close out 2015 with a Pizza Party for the whole school and a giant cheque for $1000.00 to go towards green initiatives at their school, all because they proved that Pebble Hill is an incredibly committed group of all-star recyclers.
The competition started as a simple challenge put forth to eight Delta Schools. We put an ElectroRecycle bin in each school and left it for one week in November to see which school could round up the most broken or unwanted small electrical appliances. We gave each school some posters and handouts to spread the word, but right away the kids from every school, Pebble Hill, Port Guichon, Cliff Drive, Brooke, Heath, South Park, Hellings, and Pinewood Elementary, started taking initiative and found creative ways to give their school a chance at recycling the most. Kids made posters, gave presentations class-by-class, called assemblies, took to the airwaves through the schools’ P.A. systems and made heart felt appeals to the parents to finally clean out the garage.
The result was astonishing. In just one week, the 8 schools rounded up 1952.5kg of small appliances, filling eight mega bags with broken toasters, hair straighteners and power drills and giving an unanticipated amount of extra lifting for our pallet jack. 1952.5kg is the same weight diverted from landfills as recycling 148,000 pop cans!
The schools all did so well that we decided to add a runner-up prize for the school that came in second, which turned out to be Port Guichon in Ladner. They’re having a Pizza party of their own for the whole school this month to kick off the new year in style.
We’d like to give a huge thank you to all the schools that participated, especially to the staff, parents and of course the students who all helped make the contest a huge success. Any other schools or districts that might be interested in participating in a similar challenge should contact Stephen at [email protected]