Here’s How This Oakville School has Been Helping the Environment

Published February 19, 2019 at 8:04 pm

Reduce, reuse, recycle – this is a saying that most people have been hearing for years.

Reduce, reuse, recycle – this is a saying that most people have been hearing for years. In order to protect the environment, we are told to reduce our waste, reuse what we can, and recycle when necessary.

Now, staff and students at a school in Oakville are putting their own spin on helping the environment. 

Staff and students at Joshua Creek Public School are collecting used markers and donating them to a program to be converted into fuel.

The markers, according to a Halton District School Board (HDSB) media release, are donated to Crayola as part of the ColorCycle program – an initiative, according to the official Crayola website, that was designed in order to repurpose Crayola markers (the program will accept all brands of plastic markers).

Since the beginning of the school year, Joshua Creek has collected more than 1,300 markers. The markers are collected every two weeks by Grade 4 students in the school’s EcoClub – a club that junior students have taken an interest in.

“We were looking for ways for our junior students to develop leadership skills,” Tarryn Trimble, a teacher at Joshua Creek, said in the release. “This EcoClub seems to really appeal to this age group.”

In the release, one student commented on the environmental impacts of this club and program.

“We have to make sure the planet is a nice and safe place to live. It is not only about us, it is also about the animals that live around here,” Eldana, a Grade 4 student, said in the release. “My friends and I go around the school and people see us as ‘Cougar Collectors’, and they know that we are helping the environment.”

Since 2013, Crayola’s ColorCycle program has repurposed over 70 tons of expended markers in the United States and Canada through the use of plastic conversion technologies.

What do you think of this program?

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