Project Green has been very busy recently. They have recently finished their water barrel project and have started collecting markers to recycle.
The club painted a water barrel as part of an initiative from the Erie County of Department of Environment and Planning. They created an image of a rainbow fish, but instead of scales, the image has CD’s. This is to show how the ocean and sea life are covered with plastic.
The rain barrel is part of a competition. They have not heard whether they have won it or not. The competition is divided by grade level, so Project Green’s rain barrel will be facing off with other high school’s creations.
The club originally planned to do a full mural, but realized they did not have enough time. They plan to save the design for the competition next year.
Another important thing that Project Green is doing is the collection of markers to recycle. In a school filled with whiteboards, markers are used every day. Many of them are well past their time, struggling to write anything.
Before, these markers were thrown out and sent to landfills. Now, Project Green is providing the opportunity for students and staff to recycle their old markers, through a Crayola program called ColorCycle.
Mrs. Korn, advisor of Project Green, said, “At this school, we throw out hundreds to thousands of dry-erase and regular markers a year, so this will prevent all that plastic from ending up in a landfill.”
She got the idea from her co-teacher Mrs. Schapp, who heard of it from her daughter in California. The club has placed collection bins in each of the team areas and the main office.
What ColorCycle does is it takes the plastic from the markers (the casing and cap) and recycles them to create new markers. Crayola is very focused on being green and teaching students about the environment. Many of their markers are made from recycled plastic.
One other school in the district has been sending their markers to Crayola as well. Dodge Elementary has been doing this for a while, and Mrs. Korn is waiting to see how the shipping process goes before telling other schools to join in,
The shipping process is completely free. Crayola pays for the shipping label, meaning that all a school has to do is collect markers and sign up with ColorCycle, which Mrs. Korn said was incredibly easy.
