Many people talk about being environmentally friendly, but members of the Oak Park Elementary School EnAct Club are taking action.
The club, with 92 fourth-, fifth- and sixth-grade students, sponsored a bottle cap contest and collected more than 1,017 pounds of plastic bottle caps in honor of Earth Day last month. Those caps will be sent to Aveda to be recycled into beauty product containers instead of winding up in a landfill or incinerator. Money raised from the contest will benefit cancer victims.
Throughout the year, the students in the club take part in various recycling efforts. They placed containers in the school cafeteria and around the building to collect plastic bottles, dairy tubs, juice and chip bags. EnAct club members then clean and prepare that trash to be shipped to Terracycle. Terracycle, of Trenton, N.J., pays for the shipping, gives the club money and makes new products from the trash materials. Terracycle products are sold at Target, Walmart, Home Depot and Lowes.
The club also coordinates paper collection for recycling at the school. A company called Abitibi then makes new paper from the recycled paper. The Oak Park Home & School Association receives money for each ton of paper the students collect. Members of the club also take part in North Penn’s Green Schools program, to help the district save energy.
“I like how you get to save energy for the Earth and save electricity and money for the school,” said Rebecca Brandolph, 11, a fifth-grader who is in EnAct.
Patrick Flatley, 10, a fourth-grader, said, “I like when we get to go outside and plant flowers for the environment. It’s fun and we get to do a lot of activities to help save the earth.”
“I learned that there’s something called a phantom load, even when you think your appliances are off, you can still be using electricity,” said Garrett Zobel, 12, a sixth-grader. “It’s important to check.”
Zobel also came up with the slogan: “If the light’s too bright, it’s not bad for your sight. Do the math and turn off half.” That explains the club’s action plan to get teachers to turn off lights. They’ve also used incentives like certificates as rewards and motivation to save energy, said Brandolph.
Brandolph and Steve Kowalczyk, 11, who is also in fifth grade, were slated to do a presentation about what the club has done at the Green Schools celebration Tuesday. Their presentation shows that they measured how much lights in each classroom cost per year. “We went around to every classroom and got all the data and figured out the total cost for a year,” he said.
Amy Walter, a teacher who advises the group, said the students have learned about “recycling and reducing energy and taking care of our planet Earth.” This is the sixth year for the club.
