In rural Indiana, Castle North Middle School’s Green Team noticed that waste items were being placed in the wrong recycling bins and decided to address this issue throughout the school and local community. Their overarching goal was to ensure efficient recycling to reduce their impact on landfills and to use fewer natural resources.
Although recycling had been a norm for a long time at Castle North Middle School, the Green Team and their two teachers found that students and teachers did not fully understand the recycling process, often misplacing waste in wrong bins. This led to some challenges, as the Green Team had to spend time during their meetings going through the bins to re-sort misplaced items.
Therefore, the Castle North Middle School Green Team decided to refresh their school’s understanding of recycling. With a bit of creativity, the Green Team made posters to hang up around the school, as well as a recycling bulletin board, to show their peers what can and cannot be recycled. They created awareness of the issue during morning announcements and shared informative presentations with other classes and teachers, to make sure that everyone at school understood the correct way to sort their waste and the importance of doing so.
And their efforts paid off! Since the beginning of the school year, they managed to recycle almost 5000 plastic bottles, and 2000 aluminium cans, as well as 280 full bins of paper.
“We believe that understanding the importance of recycling is beneficial for everyone! We have observed less trash leaving the school in the dumpster. Every time we recycle, we are surprised by how much is being recycled.” – Kara Grooms, teacher.
In addition to resetting their school on the right recycling path, the Green Team organised a Community Action Day in April! Students, parents, teachers, and other local helpers picked up over 600 pieces of trash around the school and collected a large number of aluminum cans which were then recycled by Alcoa. They also used some of the day working in the school’s garden rebuilding flower beds, giving a boost to local biodiversity.
The Alcoa W5 project of Castle North Middle School supports the following SDGs:
