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Schools

Grand Prairie's Trash Mountain a Fitting Earth Day Tribute

Mount Go Green is just a portion of the 150 bags of aluminum cans and plastic bottles collected by students as part of a national contest.

Driving down Caton Farm Road past Grand Prairie Elementary School, one might think the garbage trucks are neglecting to stop at the school.

After all, numerous bags of trash are stacked in a giant heap on the well-manicured grass near the entryway.

But this is no ordinary pile of garbage.

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In this garbage mountain, known as Mount Go Green, are some 20,000 plastic or aluminum containers in 150 bags that the school plans to recycle.

And that’s only a small fraction of what the Grand Prairie community has collected in the past few months as part of its efforts to help the environment.

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Each week, between 10,000 and 12,000 items of recyclable non-alcoholic beverage containers are brought to the school for parents, students and staff to scan and log as part of a nationwide contest sponsored by Waste Management and PepsiCo.

Grand Prairie is participating in the Dream Machine Recycle Rally, which aims to collect 22 million pounds of recycled material by June.

Already, Grand Prairie has collected more than 80,000 recyclable containers weighing more than 3,000 pounds.

As of Wednesday, the school was ranked 23rd nationwide in the Recycle Rally contest. The school that recycles the most containers will win a $100,000 grand prize. Grand Prairie, for being in the top 50 percent of schools nationwide, was entered into a drawing and earned $5,000 for its efforts.

“It’s quite amazing,” school principal Janan Szurek said. “It’s more than we thought it would be.”

The school’s green committee along with parent volunteers, Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts and student council members help log the number of containers for the contest.

Displaying a mere two weeks of recycling in its mountain outside the school shows the children how much trash could possibly end up in landfills, Szurek said.

“We wanted a visual for the students that says, ‘Look at what would have gone into a landfill if we didn’t recycle,’” she said. “Our philosophy is to show kids to care about the earth and make a difference. We are molding these children to make the choices that will affect our future.”

Already, the 730 Grand Prairie students are coming up with ideas to spend the $5,000 money it earned. Knowing it will be put towards a green initiative, students have come up with ideas from installing solar panels on the schools, hand dryers for the bathrooms and adding more recycling cans around the school, Szurek said.

“I like how we are helping the environment,” parent volunteer Lisa Lydon said. “The kids really love to see what difference they can make. That’s what it is all about.”

The Dream Machine Recycle Rally, which ends April 30, is just one effort the students and staff at Grand Prairie have done to help the earth.

The school was the first in Plainfield Community Consolidated School District 202 to have plastic reusable lunch trays, a move that cuts its lunch trash from 17 bags of daily garbage to five bags of garbage.

When lunch ends, students also know which one of the 16 cans to throw away or recycle their lunch items. There’s separate recycling cans for chip wrappers, juice pouches, Lunchables inserts, plastic baggies, milk cartons, paper, plastic, aluminum and, of course – trash.

The school earns 2 cents for each wrapper or juice pouch it can recycle, which amounts to $300 to $400 a year.

Next year, the school’s theme will be “Growing Up Green.”

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