Students at Miller Elementary recycle juice pouches to brighten day of ill kids
Every weekday at lunchtime, a curious scene plays out in elementary school cafeterias around the country.
Students unpack their lunchboxes and hawk their dietary wares with a fervor that would make a Wall Street broker blush. A Fruit Roll-up for a Chewy bar here, a Yoo-Hoo for a Juicy Juice there. Chocolate bars are worth their weight in gold.
At Dr. Joyanne D. Miller Elementary School, which Egg Harbor Township's fifth- and sixth-graders attend, students trade their empty Capri Sun pouches for something else: hope.
Since January 2011, art teacher Wendy Montecalvo has been collecting the pouches and exchanging them for points as part of a program run by the Princeton-based company TerraCycle, which creates new products from waste. These points can be redeemed as a cash donation to a nonprofit organization or a school of the donor's choice.
"I kind of fell into it," Montecalvo said. "I read in a magazine article on Riah's Rainbow, which is the charity that I give the money to, and it was through them that I started collecting the Capri Suns."
To date, Montecalvo and the students at Miller have collected and exchanged 19,414 pouches, which translates to just less than $400 for the charity.
Riah's Rainbow is named in memory of Mariah Jean Klein, who died in 2008 at age 4 after a battle with diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, an aggressive brain tumor with no known cure. The charity's mission is one with which the art teacher sympathizes: The group uses donations to purchase coloring books for children in pediatric hospitals as an escape from their painful illnesses, just as they were for Riah.
Montecalvo enlists the aid of a few Miller students in the project. When fifth-grader Emily Ross, who was in her class last year, said she missed the art teacher, Montecalvo gave her a job as part of the project. On Wednesdays and Fridays, Emily spends some of her lunch period with Montecalvo, cleaning and counting the juice boxes.
Since she took on the job at the beginning of this school year, Emily said, she has become a Capri Sun enthusiast.
"When my friends come over, they'll drink a juice box. I've got this little box at home they put them in," said Emily, 11, of Steelmanville. "I end up buying like two or three boxes a week because I drink them so much."
Kevin Ditmire, a standout student in Montecalvo's art class, also volunteered to help as part of the project. Every day, he and a friend of his choice carry the day's haul from the cafeteria to Montecalvo's room.
Despite his youth, the fifth-grader said he is conscious of the environment, which made the project an appealing one.
"I've always been like a big fan of the environment," said Kevin, 10, of Cardiff. "I don't throw my trash on the ground or anything. I'm kind of eco-friendly, so this is one of the reasons I did it, too, because I like Earth."
TerraCycle also runs exchange programs, known as brigades, for a number of other waste products, including candy wrappers, potato chip bags and soda cans.
Montecalvo said she's open to expanding Miller's participation in the future, but right now her hands - and those of her little helpers - are full with the thousands of Capri Suns they're moving each month.
