Park Forest Elementary on top for environmental efforts
TerraCycle Include USA
No one does it better than Park Forest Elementary School.
Recycling, that is.
CDT employee mugshot Britney Milazzo on Wednesday, April 3, 2013. Christopher Weddle CDT photo
And there’s proof.
Principal Donnan Stoicovy and four former students, who are heading into sixth grade, made a trip to Washington, D.C., last week to pick up an award for their efforts on a schoolwide recycling and sustainability program.
4 PFE students given the President’s Environmental Youth Award
Adam Cooper, Adam Lieb, Robert Rothrock and Elijah Snyder were recipients of the President’s Environmental Youth Award for their leadership in helping their school become a zero-waste facility.
“I was really excited that me and my friends had won this award,” Elijah said. “I really care about the future of the Earth, and the recycling we do at PFE will improve that future. In Washington, it was really cool to see that there are a lot of other people working toward the same goal.”
Stoicovy said Park Forest Elementary students and staff diverted 85 percent of their school’s waste from landfills and cut its waste bill by about half.
“It’s been a passion of mine for a long time, but I don’t want to take all the credit for it,” Stoicovy said. “It’s a full-school effort, and we’re even getting a lot of help from parents and the Centre County Recycling and Refuse Authority.”
Adam Lieb said the project started about three years ago with recycling in individual classrooms.
“Then we would take these items to the sorting center, one on each floor,” he said. “From there we would divide all the recyclables into the correct containers, which reduced what was sent to the landfill.”
The project grew from there.
Plant Supervisor Danny Gill made a small version of a waste station in the school’s cafeteria.
Stoicovy said the contraption was made from an old waste station from the recycling department at Penn State.
Gill cut it down to a smaller size so it was useable for elementary-aged students.
The school also works with TerraCycle — a New Jersey-based recycling company that rewards its customers for reducing waste.