March 28, 2024

Milk cartons no longer trash at Woodrow Wilson

Elementary students learn about recycling firsthand

It isn’t simply a cost or landfill impact that a new program will hopefully make on Woodrow Wilson Elementary School students.

It’s about creating a new way of thinking.

The Feb. 9 start to the Wilson’s milk-carton recycling program, done in conjunction with Dodd’s Trash Hauling, is the latest effort to not only keep landfills from filling, but also to get students to think globally about refuse and recycling.

Liz Dodd, operations manager for the hauling company, was on hand at Woodrow Wilson on the first day of the new program, helping the school’s fourth, fifth and sixth-grade students remember to put place milk cartons in a different container from the rest of their trash.

“If we have more recycling arrangements that are this convenient, combined with curbside recycling, we’re showing them that recycling couldn’t get much easier,” Dodd said.

Cori Latcham, a Talented and Gifted teacher at the school, said the discussion began while working on a “ecological footprint” project with fourth-grade TAG students.

“Students had to agree on a common subject,” Latcham said. “Others considered were clean water, renewable energy sources, etc. They settled on recycling.”

The lunchroom quickly emerged as a focal point of the recycling talks.

“Recycling in the classrooms had lost its priority, and nothing was being recycled in the lunchroom,” Latcham said. “We consulted Pete (Simmons, head custodian) and Liz (Dodd), and we learned more about the trash and the recycling procedures. We decided that the food problem is bigger than we can tackle — so we focused on recycling.”

Latcham said the fourth-graders created a commercial with the Apple “iMovie” program to share with the student body. They also did daily announcements the week before the first day of the milk-carton program to help generate excitement.

“Now we recycle in the lunchroom for breakfast and lunch, and the student body is more aware of recycling within the classrooms,” Latcham said.

Dodd said that while the hauling company has different arrangements at each Newton school, and has done recycling for years, the milk-carton concept at Woodrow Wilson is unique.

She said Simmons normally fills about three bags of trash at lunch each day at the school, but the milk-carton sorting reduced the trash to one half of one bag. April 20 will mark the 25th anniversary of Dodd’s first recycling effort in Jasper County.

“I don’t where those 25 years have gone, and I wash I would have journaled our recycling a little better,” she said.

Dodd said it’s sometimes tough to measure recycling savings in dollars, especially for customers who pay a flat rate for hauling and/or dumping. However, the main focus is teaching about recycling as a part of life.

“We’re showing them you have to give materials a second life,” Dodd said. “This program creates habits these kids will do forever.”