Successful programs encourage children to gather recycables.
By SHARON UDASINRecycling 311(photo credit: Courtesy ELA)
Schools across Israel collected over three million bottles for recycling during the 2010-2011 academic year, a 17 percent rise from the previous school year, the ELA Recycling Corporation announced on Monday.The three leading high school and elementary school collectors were Tzuirm Landscape School in Tzur Yigal, Beit Yaakov Teachers Institute in Jerusalem and Sarah Girls School in Bnei Barak, while the three best performing kindergartens were Gan Rakefet in Kiryat Ono, Gan Hamad in Katzir-Harish and Gan Shush Maron in Beit Dagan, according to the ELA.In total, the bottles gathered amounted to over NIS 900,000 in recycling deposit fees for the schools.The schools were partaking in the “Recycling for a Purpose” program, which began six years ago. Since its onset, the program has involved 2,775 educational institutions and has overseen the delivery of new child-friendly recycling facilities to about 200 schools, an ELA statement said.This year, in line with the original project, ELA has launched a new program called “Magic of Recycling,” which entails collecting bottles, depositing them for fees and also receiving schoolwide prizes in return.Last year’s winning kindergarten in Kiryat Ono used the money it earned depositing bottles to purchase new computers, a refrigerator, a stove and children’s games.Meanwhile, students at Tzurim Landscape School have invested the money gained for their efforts, which included staging a “collection factory” that sent teams of students to gather bottles throughout the community each Friday.
Another success story took place at Mazrib Elementary School, in the Arab-Israeli town of Zarzir, where a gym teacher encouraged the school’s 270 students to collect nearly 24,000 beverage containers and thereby enabled the school to purchase new sports equipment with the NIS 7,000 in deposits earned.“Recycling culture is a subject that children bequeath upon their parents,” said ELA director Nehama Ronen in a statement.“A child recycling is identical to a house recycling, and therefore we are investing great efforts in the topic of promoting recycling in the school systems. A summary of the past academic year indicates that our efforts in this direction and in recycling education are bearing fruit.”
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