Lincoln Park Recycling Club celebrates America Recycles Day with competition

The Recycling Club at Lincoln Park Performing Arts Charter School is less than a year old and members are already making an environmental impact.

The club plans to celebrate America Recycles Day on Thursday, Nov. 15, when it kicks off a competition for all middle school homerooms. Through an organization called the ABC Partnership, the club aims to convert 500 pounds of plastic lids and caps into a beautiful picnic table for the school. The competition runs through Nov. 30.

Held every Nov. 15, America Recycles Day is a day when organizations and people across the nation recycle items to promote greener living. Last year, an estimated 1.9 million people participated in the program started by the nonprofit Keep America Beautiful. This led to the collection of roughly 56 million pounds of recyclables.

Last year, Lincoln Park’s Recycling Club launched with a recycling drive that encouraged students to collect old, dried out markers, that were then shipped off and recycled by the Crayola Company. Jessica Ezop, the club’s adviser, said that, thus far, the club has recycled more than 4,000 plastic bottles since the group got recycle bins placed throughout school grounds in February. The bins were donated after the club posted a request on Donors Choose, a Go Fund Me website for teachers and educators.

Ezop said part of the request had to be written by students. Members of the recycling club wrote essays and all of the proposals required to get recycling materials, including why the effort was important to them, what they planned to do with the funding, and how this would help support leadership.

Ripple, a bitcoin company, funded every request, including the $2,300 needed to purchase the bins at $115 each.

“We finally have everything now,” Ezop said.

In the 2016-17 school year, Ezop started paper recycling, which was easier because the borough has large paper bins at the municipal building. Plastic and aluminum recycling was harder because Midland doesn’t recycle either of those.

The Recycling Club now has large recycling bins on all three floors of the school, one in the gym and one on both floors of Alumni Hall. Additionally, a compost bin has been set up outside and in the cafeteria, and battery recycling bins have been placed with science and math teachers in their rooms.

“They’re pretty much everywhere,” Ezop said.

The hard part is collecting all the recycling. Because Midland doesn’t have a recycling program, Ezop must take care of emptying the bins. One of the club’s big future projects is to get the entire borough to begin recycling plastics.

The club is continuously planning new projects, as students think of new weekly challenges. A website that the group launched keeps track of its efforts.

Participants in the plastic lid competition can see a list of acceptable items and keep track of the competition at https://sites.google.com/lppacs.org/lppacsrecycles