Keeler Elementary students and staff are participating in a school-wide environmental education program called the “Radical Recycling” program.  Every child in the school can feel that they make a difference in creating a clean and healthy environment by recycling their juice containers. When our class collects the containers every Friday to prepare them for the Bottle Depot, students are incorporating math skills in sorting, tallying, and calculating our weekly totals. 

To help motivate students, staff members have initiated weekly challenges by setting a goal for students to achieve.  This increases participation in the program. If the students are successful in meeting the weekly goal, staff members have to follow through with their challenge. We have had staff dress up like a clown, dye their hair blue, perform a hip-hop dance in front of the whole school, a “Wacky Wednesday”, and a Principal who actually kissed a live pig!  You know the students are excited when you hear a loud roar around the school upon the announcement on the P.A. system, that the students have met their weekly goal.

It is amazing how fast the numbers add up! To date, we have recycled 7, 210 juice containers and have raised $400 for our Healthy Snack Program. All proceeds from this program go to buy a fresh fruit or vegetable for every child in the school at the end of each month. For some of our students, it was the first time that they had tried a mandarin orange!

With the recent tragedy that has affected thousands of families, the “Radical Recyclers” decided to make a difference by donating the proceeds from our January and February collection to the Fred Seymour rebuilding Morgan Village (west coast of Thailand) project. There has been a noticeable increase in our weekly recycling totals since we implemented this goal in our school. I was moved when a grade six student knocked on my classroom door to present me with her piggy bank savings to donate to this relief effort.”

This recycling project has fostered a sense of community within our school. It has been amazing how the students and staff have bought into this program. Who knows where this project will take us next? The sky is the limit!