A School Achieves its Recycling Goals at Fremont

The students of Cabrillo Elementary School, Fremont actively participated in the six-week recycling challenge “Ready Set Recycle” from March 28 to May 6, and successfully completed their recycling goals. The aim of this challenge was to sort out the recyclable materials from the trash, and reduce the amount of waste going to the landfills.

The Challenge Undertaken By Cabrillo Elementary School

Previously, the waste bins in Cabrillo Elementary School consisted of 80% compostable and recyclable materials, which produced over ten bags of 32-gallon garbage everyday. This resulted in a huge amount of waste sent unnecessarily to landfills. When StopWaste’s garbage audit revealed these numbers the teachers of Cabrillo decided to do something about this environmentally destructive affair.

So, organized by the student council of the sixth grade with help from StopWaste.org, the students of Cabrillo Elementary School participated in the six-week Ready Set Recycle Challenge. The goal was to make the garbage bins contain less than 20% recyclables. Not only did they set this goal, the students of the school meticulously sorted their garbage from March 28 to May 6, and by then, the garbage bins did contain only 17% compostable materials and only 3% recyclables. This caused the number of per day garbage bags to drop to less than one from the earlier ten bags per day. Teacher Michelle Guerrero, who had also lent a hand in organizing the challenge, says that this was a great way to raise awareness among students about the harmfulness of landfills.

This recycling challenge by StopWaste.org was part of a larger initiative taken in Alameda County. The program encourages eco friendly promotional items by rewarding those residents of the County who sort household waste properly. StopWaste also operates in more than 30 of the secondary schools in Alameda County to reduce sending campus recyclables to landfills and educates the community about the importance of eco-friendliness.

The Benefits of Recycling and Using Eco Friendly Promotional Items

Recycling and reusing not only reduces the amount of unnecessary landfills that release harmful greenhouse gases into the air and dangerous chemicals into the ground, but can also help conserve the limited resources. Manufacturing eco friendly promotional items through recycling can save the costs of acquiring new raw materials, and can create more jobs as well. Recycling also saves on energy – for example, it takes 20 times more energy to manufacture a new aluminum can, than it does to recycle one. Performed on a national scale, recycling can build a stronger economy as it has a huge impact on fields like resource conservation, energy use, and jobs.

Source: http://www.mercurynews.com/fremont/ci_23310080/fremont-students-meet-recycle-goals