Welcome back to my blog! So far, my time on the Oregon Kid Governor’s cabinet has been very exciting. If you read my last blog, you would know that I have put together a very successful fundraiser based on plastic recycling. I used an amazing program called TERRACYCLE that allows you to send in plastic that is not normally accepted for recycling (e.g., toothpaste tubes, shampoo bottles, juice packets) and they will recycle it. In exchange for your plastic, they give you money that then goes to your school for better materials!
To do this I talked to an adult member of a group called the GREEN TEAM, which is part of the Oregon Green Schools program. The GREEN TEAM was created in my school to find ways to foster sustainability leadership among students and think of ways to make our school more eco friendly. The adult leader of the GREEN TEAM in my school told me that she would partner with me and sponsor the TERRACYCLE fundraising project I developed and help me send the plastic to TERRACYCLE if I collected it. To do this, we needed to create boxes to collect various kinds of plastic that is not easily recyclable and ship it to TERRACYCLE. I got a team of 5th graders to help me collect boxes from houses and recycling bins. Together we decorated them make it more fun for others. After that we designed posters to put around the school to catch peoples’ attention and advertise the program. I also talked to the parent teacher association and the principle to make sure that the program was advertised through the parent-teacher associations emails and programs, as well as those for the whole school.
Lastly, I went around from class to class telling kids why it is important to recycle and to ask them to bring in the plastic products that we were recycling through our program. Over many months many people brought in a small donations of plastic materials and we sent the plastic back to TERRACYCLE. We were able to raise hundreds of dollars for our school doing this. I am now working to make this a yearly event in more schools across Oregon.
Kaavya