Recycling pays off for area schools
Authority teams up with local schools
Monday, February 23, 2009
< -- Return to News
STEUBENVILLE - Vicky Nurczyk can still remember the early days of recycling efforts at Aquinas Central Elementary School.
"We were one of the first schools to get involved with paper recycling in 1995. At that time it was all new, but we thought it would be a good thing to be involved with when it was first proposed. So we put cardboard boxes in every classroom and asked the students to put scrap paper in the box and bring paper from home," recalled Nurczyk.
She and her school, now part of the Bishop John King Mussio Elementary school system, have come a long way from those cardboard boxes.
"Every piece of paper in this building in put into the recycling bins located behind the school. And we have great support from the community and our churches. The recycling bin is always filled with paper, plastic and metal and recycling is a way of life for us here," said Nurczyk.
It is also a financial benefit for the Lovers Lane school as well as 56 other schools in Jefferson and Belmont counties that partnered with the Jefferson-Belmont Regional Solid Waste District to collect 3,073,630 pounds of paper in 2008 for recycling.
"We received $880 from the solid waste authority for paper collected in the third quarter last year and another $940 for the fourth quarter. That money helps us with our projects, and we are also saving money by throwing away less trash," said Nurczyk.
According to Diane Julio, Keep Jefferson County Beautiful director, 57 of the 60 public and parochial schools in both counties are now actively involved with the paper recycling efforts.
"We started the program as the Jefferson County Recycling Litter Prevention program in an attempt to help the county commissioners. The community wasn't totally receptive in those days because the recycling containers we set up were only available during school hours. We have come a long way since then, and we now see recycling as a way of life in our counties and schools," said Julio.
And paper recycling paid off for the 57 schools in 2008.
"We paid the participating schools in both counties $102,000 in 2008 for the paper they recycled," cited Patrick Lanaghan, executive director of the regional solid waste authority.
"And we continue to see paper recycling grow every week. We have now added Ohio University Eastern Campus and Belmont Technical Center as well as Jefferson Community College and Franciscan University of Steubenville. They generate and recycle a tremendous amount of paper," added Lanaghan.
Julio noted it has taken years of education to make recycling popular.
"I have been doing this for 24 years and have talked to a lot of people about the need to recycle. I am actually seeing a second generation of students in the schools, and it has become a habit, and the students now receive support from their parents, grandparents, friends and neighbors," Julio commented.
Marian Barker, principal of St. Francis Central School in Toronto, has seen major support for its recycling efforts from the entire city.
"We have 65 kids in our school but the St. Francis and St. Joseph parishes as well as the community have consistently supported our recycling campaigns," said Barker.
In fact the St. Francis school finished second in Jefferson County for 2008 in paper recycling behind the Bishop John King Mussio Elementary School Lovers Lane Campus.
"We use some of the money we have received from the solid waste authority for our recycled paper for school projects along with field trips and special events. We do very well for a small school," noted Barker.
She noted another reason for the success of St. Francis is Valley Converting Co. located in Toronto.
"All of the paper we collect at our schools is taken to Valley Converting, and that company has been able to expand its operations and hire additional employees," said Julio.
Paper recycling also has been a growing enterprise at Buckeye Local Northwest Elementary in Smithfield where Cheryl DeYarmon started the program five years ago.
"I have been a science teacher for a number of years, and we started our recycling campaign as part of our observance of Earth Day. During Earth Week we run a special one-week campaign where the classrooms will compete against each other. Every piece of paper brought in for recycling is weighed and credited to that particular student for the competition," stated DeYarmon.
Buckeye Local Northwest Elementary finished third in Jefferson County in 2008 for its paper recycling efforts and collected $3,535.10 from the solid waste authority.
DeYarmon said her school also has been successful in plastic recycling campaigns during the past two years.
"We have been informed that the 'Return the Warmth' campaign has been discontinued this year for economic reasons, but we felt we couldn't tell our students plastic recycling was no longer important because we wouldn't receive rewards for our efforts. So we will continue collecting plastic for recycling," DeYarmon said.
Fourteen Jefferson County schools placed in the top 50 schools nationwide in 2007 for collecting 163,455.60 pounds of plastic bottles for recycling.
St. Francis Central School in Toronto placed third in the national competition by recycling 112 pounds of plastic bottles for each student in the school.
Paul Romano is well aware of the paper turned in by each school for recycling. He drives the solid waste authority truck that collects paper from 35 participating schools in Jefferson County.
"I used to collect the paper on Wednesdays. Now it's every day," said Romano. His son Stone, a student at Bishop John King Mussio's Rosemont Campus, is a regular contributor to that school's paper recycling container.
"All of the authority's employees have embraced recycling. They work at it but also encourage others to recycle. If we could recycle all of our paper products we would see the material taken to landfills cut nearly in half. We are doing well but we can do better," said Lanaghan.
"Part of our education program revolves around the new three 'Rs.' We teach the students to reduce, reuse and recycle. And in turn they teach their families about recycling and saving the earth," said Julio.
< -- Return to News
