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Trash or treasure? Students sift through garbage |
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Wednesday, 11 November 2009 |
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 Matthew Pracht and Molli McAlevy sort through trash to determine which items are recyclable. The exercise was part of a lesson brought to Broken Bow elementary students by Lonnie Koepke’s high school students last week. Sunday is America Recycles Day.
By MICHELLE ZLOMKE
Chief Managing Editor
One day. One community. Two elephants.
Two elephants’ worth -- or about 17,000 pounds -- is the estimated volume of trash discarded in Broken Bow in one day.
Broken Bow elementary students learned that fact during presentations by their older peers last week.
High school ag instructor Lonnie Koepke worked with his leadership class to develop a recycling message that could be shared with nearly 400 Broken Bow elementary students.
“As we started to do research, we were amazed at what we learned,” Koepke said.
They learned that plastic takes 100-400 years to break down in a landfill; the recycling of one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a television for three hours; and if all newspaper were recycled, it would save about 250 million trees each year.
Using information like this, the leadership class crafted a presentation that they hoped would have a great impact in the community.
The plan was a little larger than the usual research and presentation project the leadership class usually undertakes.
“We felt if we were going to do it, we wanted to do this for all the elementary kids,” Koepke said.
They also decided the project should involve more high school students than are enrolled in the leadership class.
Koepke had all of his ag classes participate in the project throughout the day.
“It would have been a lot easier to have one class do the same presentation all day long, but then you wouldn’t have been training as many,” he said. “It’s good for them to get up in front of people. I think a lot of these kids would have never done that.”
In addition to providing recycling facts and information to the elementary students, the high school students helped them sort through trash to determine what could be recycled.
“It was hands-on. They actually got to work with it,” Koepke said. “That’s critical and it brought the points home to them.”
The trash the kids used came from the school-wide recycling project. There are blue bins throughout the buildings for recyclables. Koepke’s classes are responsible for collecting and sorting the items.
They’ve been doing that since 1998, Koepke said, and last year, collected 28,000 pounds of recyclables.
The day’s activities also included presentations by Linda Studnicka, a staff member with Lower Loup Natural Resources District.
Koepke said Studnicka showed the students how plastic water bottles can be recycled and woven into filaments that can be used for clothing fabric.
The children also learned about local recycling efforts and facilities from Custer County Recycling director Kelly Flynn.
At the end of each classroom presentation, there was a prize drawing for reusable grocery bags provided by Custer Public Power District. |
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 19 November 2009 )
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