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Mupu School students in Barbra Winder and Deanna Nese’s fifth- and sixth-grade classroom sort through a bag of recycling and trash at the Recology Ventura presentation in their classroom earlier this month. Pictured from left, around the table, are Emily Brockus, Alex Gonzalez, Alina Garcia, Garrett Nelson, Marcus Castaneda at the head of the table, Andy Mijares, Kennadee Jenkins, Leslie Coronel and Zack Addison. |
Mupu School students learn the 3 Rs: reduce, reuse, recycle
April 06, 2016
By Marianne Ratcliff
Santa Paula News
Mupu School students aced the trash test
“Kids really want to make a difference in the world,” said Melissa Heitz, Recology Ventura County Waste Zero manager. She and Waste Zero Specialist Simone Blackwell visited Mupu School recently to deliver hands-on “Junior Recologist” lessons about how to reduce, reuse and recycle.
It is a big job to get to zero waste, with Recology’s estimate of 31.2 million tons of trash deposited in California landfills in 2015. Recology, the resource recovery company that collects trash, recycling and green waste in the city of Santa Paula, is on a mission to reduce waste one trash and recycling bin at a time. Recology Ventura County’s newly created Junior Recologist Program teaches students how to be environmental stewards in school, at home and in their communities.
Mupu students got the message at two Junior Recologist Program presentations for students in third through sixth grades. Holding bags stuffed with shoelaces, napkins, bottles, cups, fortune-cookie wrappers, a pink glove and Styrofoam plates, they had to discard the various items into recycling or trash bags held up by Blackwell and Heitz. They had to explain their choices -- and there were some surprises. For example, kitchen glasses and windows have special additives that make them unrecyclable. Shoelaces can be made into headbands. A fast-food restaurant cup goes in the trash because of its wax coating.
Students had even better ideas, suggesting that unwanted glass cups can be donated and wax-coated cups composted or used as planters.
“The kids are so creative,” said Heitz. “I was just so impressed by how smart they are. I was impressed by how much they already knew about recycling and how they want to make a difference in their community.”
At one table in the fifth- and sixth-grade class, Emily Brockus, Alex Gonzalez, Alina Garcia, Garrett Nelson, Marcus Castaneda, Andy Mijares, Kennadee Jenkins, Leslie Coronel and Zack Addison could not stop smiling and laughing as they debated where the items in their bag should go: trash, recycle or donate. The pink glove had them stumped.
When it came time to determine the fate of a Styrofoam plate, Heitz asked the students what is environmentally friendlier than Styrofoam. The answers came back: A paper plate. Or, better yet, a reusable plate.
“Mupu School is very big on recycling,” said Barbra Winder, who teaches fifth and sixth grades. “This will make the kids even more aware to use the recycling bins.” After spending an hour with the fifth- and sixth-graders, Blackwell and Heitz headed over to the third- and fourth-grade classroom, with teachers Marilyn Beckerman and Mayra Barroso.
Students created a Waste Zero Plan, brainstorming and recording their ideas on a poster to be hung in their classrooms. They included: Donate hair for a wig. Use old lost-and-found clothes to make a quilt. Make a sculpture with recyclables. Create a mural with Stickie notes. Use reusable plates and real silverware. If you use plastic utensils, wash and reuse them. Take a lunch pail to school. Stay away from Styrofoam. Plant seeds in a jar. Store stuff in shoeboxes. Recycle milk cartons. Try not to use plastic bags. Write with mechanical pencils. Put lemon peels in a compost pile. Shut off the tap while brushing your teeth and washing your face. Create pencil containers out of tissue boxes. Donate books. Don’t drink out of plastic water bottles. Turn spaghetti jars into drinking glasses. Treat things gently so they last longer. Put on a play about how to reduce, reuse and recycle.
Blackwell explained how everything the students put into the trash bag goes into a landfill, which is “a big hole in the ground where we put our trash.” Because there is not a lot of space, the goal is to “make sure as little waste goes into the landfill as possible,” Blackwell said.
Students also watched a video of recycling facilities to see what happens with the recyclables and trash they throw into their recycling and trash cans at school.
Plastic bags are a challenge because they can get caught in recycling machinery, Heitz said. As a result, most material recycling facilities do not want to take them. Key to recycling are the number codes on recyclable plastics. Heitz explained that No. 1 is the most common plastic -- polyethylene terephthalate, also known as PET -- used for making plastic water bottles and other products. The higher recycling numbers indicate that more materials have been mixed into the plastic. For example, Heitz said, a plastic bottle cannot be recycled back into what it was. “Once it is melted down, it becomes a whole new property.” That means that, although a recycled plastic bottle, with a recycling number 1, can never again be made into another plastic bottle, it can become a milk crate, with, say, a recycling number 7, Heitz explained.
Zero waste is a real goal, Heitz said. “We think it’s possible.” San Francisco diverts 85 percent of its waste, she said. “If you look back when our parents grew up, there was little waste because there was very little disposable packaging,” Heitz said. “We come from a world that had zero waste, but now we are very wasteful. We need to rewind and get back to our roots.”
Recology Ventura County is also helping students tackle their food waste with more school presentations. Blackwell and Heitz plan to teach composting. “We want kids to choose the programs that benefit them most and have kids help to teach other kids,” Heitz said. Recology Ventura County is also working with area restaurants to assist them with ways to keep their food waste out of the landfill, she said.
“We are just really excited to be in Santa Paula,” Heitz said. “It is the perfect little community to work with. Everyone cares about health and making good decisions. We are helping the community make good decisions about how to treat waste, to use as little of the land as possible for landfills. It is a beautiful area and we want to keep it that way.”
All the students received bookmarks with the Junior Recologist pledge, which is about being environmental stewards by recycling, reducing and reusing and teaching others how to reduce waste. To make recycling even easier, brand-new recycling bins with “Recycle” printed on them have been provided to Mupu School by California’s Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery (CalRecycle).
Recology Ventura County takes collected recycling from Santa Paula to Oxnard’s Del Norte Recycling Center, trash to Chiquita Landfill and green waste to Agromin for growing-soil mixes and mulch.
Mupu students already have plans on how to spend money they earn from recycling, including purchasing reusable water bottles and creating hydration stations around the school, Heitz said. “You’d be surprised at how once kids get interested, others follow suit,” she added.
Blackwell and Heitz’s Junior Recology school presentation is brand-new, so Mupu School students are among the first to hear it. Presentations can be requested by contacting Blackwell at sblackwell@recology.com or calling her at 818-640-2502.
And the lone pink glove? That was a tough one, since it is hard to donate just one glove. Resourceful Mupu students decided it could be turned into a cat toy.
