2009 Longhorn Recycle Roundup Winners... Congratulations to the below schools for their outstanding campus recycling, conservation, and beautification initiatives. Winning schools receive $500 to improve their campus environmental efforts and will be recognized on the field at the UT vs. Kansas Game on November 21st.

Schools with new recycling programs are recognized with the Coca-Cola Recycle Rookie Award. The 2009 Coca-Cola Recycle Rookie Award and $250 cash prize winner is Eastside High School.

 

Honorable Mentions... We would also like to recognize the following schools for their outstanding campus environmental efforts.

The $100 Longhorn Recycle Roundup Drawing goes to Kiker Elementary School.

 

Recycling paper, print cartridges, cell phones, plastic, and aluminum; collecting rainwater, composting, and maintaining native garden beds is the norm at schools winning this years’ Longhorn Recycle Roundup contest.  What sets these schools apart is that these efforts are campus wide involving students, teachers, and parents. Winning schools have proven to be innovative in their efforts to go green. Read more…

Brentwood Elementary School has seen a dramatic increase in student interest in environmental efforts this past year, and they have certainly encouraged the curiosity. With 3 after school environmental clubs, and participation for each booming students organized the school wide Earth Day festival with classes weighing their trash after recycling and composting and environmental learning stations; wrote and made morning recycling announcements, raised money for endangered animals and cleaned up trash around their campus and neighboring Arroyo Seco.

 

In 2007, Brentwood students investigated the trash problem in their school cafeteria and have been implementing solutions ever since. Students from ALL grade levels studied the compost process, and every day they collect over 10 pounds of compostables from the cafeteria. From the collection they produced enough compost to nourish all nine (an increase from 3 the previous year) of the school gardens.

 

In line with their zero waste mentality Brentwood hosted a least waste lunch contest and students campaigned successfully for the purchase of a dishwasher to eliminate the use of Styrofoam trays. Their campus recycling includes 200 lbs of cans and plastic bottles recycled, 4 cubic feet of used electronics sent to Ecophones, 300 pounds of batteries collected, and 2,400 energy bar wrappers sent to Terra Cycle to be reused. Brentwood continues to be innovative in their greening efforts… a clothing sewing day transformed old clothes into new styles, and a solar fountain in the garden is used to teach students about alternative energy.

From increasing their paper recycling from 2 to 4 tons a month to hosting a Styrofoam recycling day to address the mounds of packaging generated over the holidays Bryker Woods is a leader in school efforts to go green. Recently they took a big step in reducing their environmental footprint by replacing disposable Styrofoam trays and sporks with reusable trays eliminating 6 bags of trash a day that were generated by the disposable trays.

 

They’re not so small list of ongoing environmental efforts include Litter Free Lunch Days, a Take 2 Campaign that aims to reduce the number of paper towels students use, plastic bottle and composting instituted at all school fairs and events, a Swap-O-Rama to restyle old clothes into new fashions, Compost Fridays to collect vegetable and food scraps, a 2,500 gallon rainwater collection tank provides water for the certified school yard habitats, and cleanups of the local creek.

 

Bryker Woods students are aware and involved in their school’s efforts to go green; students weigh the amount of paper recycling each week, K, 2nd, 4th, and 6th grades maintain worm bin composting in their classrooms, 4th graders produced a “Because Good Planets are Hard to Find” skit to kick off the campus Technotrash drive which collected 140lbs of electronics sent to GreenDisk to be repurposed and recycled; and 1st and 4th graders regularly tend the raised bed gardens.

Gullet’s recycling and environmental efforts are embedded in the campus and involve students, parents, and teachers. The school has been recycling aluminum cans since 1980 and last year collected 1,958 pounds of cans! Other campus recycling efforts include collecting 25.72 tons of paper in the 2008-2009 school year, 66 phones, and 250 pounds of batteries. Recycling gets messy too…5th graders oversee and collect food scraps from the cafeteria on a daily basis to incorporate into their compost system. Enough compost was generated to fertilize the school’s herb and vegetable gardens the 2nd graders care for and harvest.

 

Gardening on campus is just as extensive – nearly 300 perennials fill the multitude of native garden beds, raised beds were built with handicap access, a container pond rounds out the habitat, and a rain barrel conserves water while keeping the plants thriving.

 

Their Go Green afterschool Club is student-run, and includes activities such as making artwork out of trash, weekend cleanups around the school and throughout Austin, and creating an Earth Day quiz for the rest of the student body. Gardens, composting, rainwater collection, and recycling are an everyday occurrence at Gullet.

 

The environment is taking a front seat at Small Middle School. Last year, with over ten years of campus greening efforts to build from Small Middle School adopted a campus wide environmental studies focus bringing environmental concepts into fieldtrips and into core subject areas. A green committee has been established spanning all subjects and grade levels to ensure the focus is maintained. Math classes are measuring and scaling garden beds, English classes are reading literature focused on the environment and across campus you will find students completing 2 campus cleanups a year, recycling paper, composting at 1 of their 4 compost bins including new food scrap collection from the cafeteria, tending to the 250 native plant species on the school grounds that includes a certified schoolyard habitat, tagging monarch butterflies, and watering plants from water collected in the 2 rain barrels.

 

Even plants are recycled on campus. Each year students collect seeds and seedlings from the garden to propagate in pots to sell in the spring as a fundraiser for their ongoing environmental efforts which include the installation of a greenhouse to continue to expand their propagating powers and expansion of their gardens to include an outdoor classroom. Currently, Small is working with Boy and Girl Scouts in an effort to implement expanded recycling and composting on campus; and pending grant approval additional solar panels coming soon to the school.

 

At Anderson High School, the Green Club has been very successful in involving the entire student body in their efforts. Each classroom is equipped with recycling bins for paper, cardboard, aluminum, and plastic bottles. Students in the Green Club, which claims over 200 members, spend two hours every Friday morning collecting bins and sorting the materials into the proper receptacles. Last year, the school hosted a City Waste Collection where citizens could drop off various waste items to be recycled including batteries, paint, light bulbs, and more.

 

Student led campaigns include battery and phone recycling and a Stop Coal Plants Bike Rally encouraging students to bicycle to school.

 

Students are active on campus and off. Anderson students have organized clean-ups at several parks; these cleanups go beyond trash pickup and include removing invasives, planting natives and trees to restore the parks. Anderson intends on continuing its efforts by installing solar panels in two of its eco-friendly gardens and by informing more students about the community and the environment.

The alarming facts of today’s trash output statistic spurred Eastside Memorial High School into beginning an extensive recycling program. The Recycling Club has teamed up with the Film Club in order to create announcements promoting the school’s efforts to the entire student body to encourage participation. Eastside has many aspirations for its recycling future, including a conserving paper towels campaign, eliminating Styrofoam and plastic in the cafeteria, using recycled copy paper, and implementing recycling in the cafeteria. The school has already begun their efforts, and had a very successful “No Styrofoam Day” in their cafeteria, which had students monitoring trash and recycle stations, instructing others on how to best dispose of their lunch waste.