Willis Lane Recycles Week

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During the week of November 14-18, 2011, we held our first annual Willis Lane Recycles Week in order to encourage waste reduction and recycling both at school and home. To promote Willis Lane Recycles Week, we sent home flyers to remind families of the new and existing recycling opportunities at school. The following were included in the week’s events:

• We reminded our students, staff, and teachers about our school’s current program which makes recycling simple by allowing everyday recyclables like paper, plastic, aluminum and glass to be placed together in bins located throughout the school.  When the recyclables are collected, they are placed in an outdoor dumpster, and then picked up by a local recycling company and maintained by the school district.   
• We created a wall display in the cafeteria to make the recycling area more visable to students, clearly noting where their recycleables should be placed. The recycling area includes a place for drink pouches, lunch kits, and all other lunch recyclables (i.e. paper bags, plastic bottles, cans).

• We promoted our three new recycling programs and set up recycling bins at the school to collect these items. In order to participate in this recycling program we registered online at www.teracycle.net and joined brigades to collect Elmer’s glue, lunch kits, and drink pouches. All these are collected and sorted by the PTA’s environmental committee. Terracycle provides free shipping and 2 cents per item sent to them. The year’s collection is expected to earn around $300 and will be used next year for environmental improvements to the school.
• On November 15, Texas Recycles Day, we offered electronic waste pickup on our school campus through a local e-waste collection company called DFW Reclaimers, Inc. Parents and teachers brought in e-waste such as old computers, monitors, printers, batteries, and household appliances so these items could be properly disposed of and not end up in our landfills. We also set up a battery box in the workroom for teachers and parents to drop off their dead batteries throughout the year.
• Finally, as a reminder to students to “be green”, we held a wear green day to wrap up the week’s events. Many teachers and students participated and it was a great visual reminder of the importance of recycling awareness.