Suncoast Elementary School first-grade teacher Tandra Lamia wears a delicious-looking visual aid when it's time to tend to the school's recycling program. It's an apron made with the empty bags of Frito-Lay products — Ruffles, Funyuns, Doritos, Tostitos, Fritos and very colorful. The children collect and send the bags to TerraCycle, a company that turns them into other products. It even pays for this treasured trash. It's a schoolwide project that the first grade handles. Dale Ryan, 7, said they are collecting chip bags now, but that the first-graders used to collect drink pouches, empty glue sticks and candy wrappers. They send the bags in bulk and get 2 cents for each one. The students count and package the bags. One of the children's jobs, said Grace Goyette, 6, is "to put some in a box, and you have to dump all the crumbs and flatten it and put it in a box." Angelina Absher-Denova, 7, said the bags are remade into stuff, like benches, trash cans, recycling bins, aprons and backpacks. "They even make pavers out of the chip bags," added Lamia. This is a big job for such little children, but they seem to understand why they do it. "So there won't be a big hole in the earth," said Brianna Johnson, 6, referring to a landfill. Aliyah Nolasco, 7, had another reason. "Because," she said, "the Earth can get very stinky if you put garbage underground." Said Rachel Hartman, 7: "The company makes it into things so we can help the Earth instead of walking into trash every day." Since her classes started back in 2009, students have brought in thousands of dollars, and Lamia emphasized that even though the collections are coordinated by her class, the entire school participates and benefits from the proceeds. Money goes to school supplies, and, she said, "We've also in the past used it to defray the cost of field trips for the children." The money is nice, but the lessons are valuable, too. "We're a very nature-friendly classroom," Lamia said.