Nov 14, 2008 4:00 pm US/Eastern
Green Scene: Students Recycling Lunch Into Stuff
PHILADELPHIA (CBS 3) ―
A Philadelphia teacher is teaching kids the importance of recycling. It starts in the lunch room and ends up on store shelves. CBS 3's Liz Keptner shows us how.
Students at Patterson Elementary School in Southwest Philadelphia love drinking juice with lunch. What they don't like? The garbage left behind.
"They were just going into the trash. The kids would finish their lunch and just put them into the trash," PE teacher Erika Buscaglia said. "When I learned that they never biodegrade, I said, 'We've gotta change that.'"
So Buscaglia found a way for students to turn trash into treasure.
Fourth grader Cire Ivery explains, "I drink my juice box and put it in the recycling bin," a special bin that Miss B then takes home. She cleans the packets and sends them to TerraCycle, which recycles them into things like backpacks, pencil cases and lunch bags.
"We have kids that have them at home. They bring them into me. If they have a birthday party, they'll bring bags of them into us on a Monday, and we'll recycle them from there," said Buscaglia.
The school isn't just helping the environment. It gets two cents for every packet it gives to TerraCycle, and it donates that money to Alex's Lemonade Stand.
Some of the kids find it hard to believe what they're doing can actually turn a juice pouch into a backpack.
"It teaches them what they should be doing, and it even takes it a step farther to the new wave of recycling," said George Chavalier of TerraCycle.
"Just to see them take responsibility for their future, because that's what they're doing and they're so enthusiastic about it, it's great to see!" Buscaglia said.
"I think I did an amazing thing to help the environment and recycle," said student Kalah Thomas, proving you're never too young to start. In Southwest Philadelphia, Liz Keptner, CBS3 Eyewitness News.
TerraCycle not only recycles juice pouches. It recycles chip bags, plastic bags, yogurt containers, and it even has a worm farm to recycle worm waste as fertilizer.
RELATED LINKS:www.TerraCycle.net
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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