Community Service

Calendars  Faculty & Staff  Food Service  Handbook  Library 

Parent Newsletter  School Board  Student Activities  HOME

 


Mrs. Martels' fourth grade students recently collected over 800 items of non-perishable food items for the Froggy Stuff-A-Truck campaign. Boxes were placed in their classrooms, in the fifth and sixth grade areas, and in the lobby. Many students helped by donating items to help families in need. This is the second year that fourth graders have participated in this worthwhile project and they hope to make this a yearly event!

December 2009

     

 

Juice Pouch Recycling

Two Kindergarten teachers were inspired this spring by an article about a company named Terra Cycle in the Sunday, April 13, 2008 Times Argus. A project had been assigned by Laurie Silvis in a LAPDA math professional development course they were taking and there seemed to be a perfect tie in. Susan Koch and Ellen Sulek joined forces on a math/science undertaking that benefited Kindergarten math skills, BTMES and the environment. They signed their Kindergarten classes up for the “juice pouch brigade”. So what exactly does that mean?

Each day juice pouches from Capri Sun, Minute Maid, etc., are consumed by some of your children at lunch. Instead of these pouches being thrown away, they were collected in the cafeteria as kids, K-8, sorted their trash, compostable items, recyclable items and silverware. In the afternoon Kindergartners cut, rinsed and counted pouches following Terra Cycle’s guidelines. Young children practiced counting skills, explored place value, and contributed to taking care of where they live by keeping the pouches out of the landfill while earning money for their school (Terra Cycle pays $.02 for each pouch mailed to them). Groups of 100 pouches were then packed into postage paid envelopes to be mailed to NJ. These pouches are made into tote bags, pencil pouches, lunch boxes or backpacks.

As of June 1st, BTMES had earned $32.00 and there were still another 800 pouches to send off (another $16.00). In order to complete the cycle, the public needs to purchase the items made. Please check the website.


Update on the Terra Cycle Juice Pouch Recycling
by Ted Riggen  March, 2009

Faithful readers of our Parent Newsletter may recall an article describing a specific type of recycling that our then-kindergartners, under the leadership of Ellen Sulek, (a Kindergarten teacher and winner of the prestigious Presidential Award in the Teaching of Science), took part in. The original idea was “dreamed up” by a couple of university graduate students (either Princeton or Rutgers, as I recall) who discovered a use for juice pouches used to market Terra Cycle fruit drinks. Out of this idea came Barre Town’s participation in the recycling of these pouches.

Every day after lunch, every Terra Cycle container was collected (versus being thrown away) by one or two kindergarten classes, taken to the classroom, carefully washed, dried, counted out in groups of 100 (think mathematics here), boxed up, and sent to the company started by the two inventive grad students.

An update is in order, and below is Mrs. Sulek’s most recent accounting of progress to date:

BTMES's participation in the “juice pouch brigade” continues to expand. When school started in August, two first-grade classes joined the ranks and picked up where last year's kindergartners left off. Emily Thomas and Julia Bellin had their environmentally-conscious students rinsing, counting, and packing the juice pouches that are to be transformed into totes, pencil pouches, backpacks, lunch boxes, and more. These products are sold online by Target.

In November, Susan O'Regan, Sally Kulis, and Ellen Sulek began teaching their 5- and 6-year olds about recycling by involving them in collecting and rinsing the pouches to be mailed to Terra Cycle. In January, Timiny Bergstrom's fourth graders took over the responsibility of helping kindergartner's with the process. It has been a wonderful cross-grade level effort.

We are continuing to raise the environmental awareness of our students while receiving money for our efforts. As of December, we have made $60.00 for some 3000 plastic pouches kept out of the landfill, with hundreds of pouches still ready to be mailed. (For our efforts, the company pays 2 cents per pouch and also pays for the postage and mailing envelopes.) The checks received have gone to the Crops by Kids garden. We intend to continue to spend the money on our composting efforts.