Recycling Excellence Awards
2019
The K-12 School Recycling Excellence Award was presented to Blue Valley in Overland Park, Kansas (Johnson County) for their 18-21 Program. Keurig K-Cup pods aren’t recyclable as a whole, but special education students at Blue Valley’s 18-21 Program have found a way to take them apart and reduce waste caused by the popular coffeemaker. The Blue Valley 18-21 Program, which helps special education students develop vocational skills, has been collecting paper and aluminum recycling for students to sort for years. This year, the program expanded its recycling service to collect K-Cup pods from local businesses, schools and organizations. Each organization received a collection bin to place near their Keurig or in a common area. After going into the community to gather the recyclables, students return to campus to sort the items and take apart the K-Cup pods using “Recycle A Cup” cutters. The students use the cutter to separate the pods, recycling the plastic, and collecting the coffee grounds to use in the program’s Greenhouse. Staff members sometimes adapt the task by holding the buttons while students twist the pod, allowing even students with physical limitations to participate. Using Recycle A Cup builds the students’ fine motor skills while keeping K-Cup pods out of landfills. Students have separated and recycled over 1,500 K-Cup pods since October 2017, with more K-Cup pods collected each week. The students enjoy the task and community members have said they appreciate the option to recycle K-Cup pods instead of throwing them away
2018
The K-12 School Recycling Excellence Award was presented to the Clear Creek Elementary School in Shawnee, Kansas (Johnson County) implemented various recycling and natural preservation components into their community. The CCE LEAD team (previously known as the Green Team) made up of 4th and 5th grade students conduct a weekly recycling pick up throughout their building and are planning to conduct a spring clean-up project around the grounds of the building in an attempt to preserve and reuse materials already at their disposal, such as mulch, etc. Last year the building leadership team, with the support of cafeteria and custodial staff, implement a recycling program in the cafeteria. Specifically, it was determined that the number of milk and juice cartons thrown in the trash day constituted a rather large portion of our overall daily trash amount. Students participated in the creation of a demonstration video that was shown to the entire student body. The video showed students separating their trash from the recycling, pouring leftover milk and juice waste into buckets, and then ultimately place placing their recycling in blue cans instead of garbage cans. Following the video, all students for walk through the new procedure for dumping their trays at the end of each lunch. The number of items recycled were weight and compared to the amount thrown away this was done for an entire week to encourage current students to recycle more.
The Individual Recycling Excellence Award was presented to Joan Graves (Topeka), who was nominated for her numerous contributions and achievements. She is a long-term employee with the Shawnee County Public Waste Department with 20 years specifically with the waste reduction and recycling section. She was key in implementing the curbside recycling program in Shawnee County. She worked from the beginning of the process with the vendor construction the Material Recovery Facility, selecting and designing the recycling carts and material labels. She coordinated and oversaw the distribution of all marketing materials for the new program and has been a part of its success. In 2006 she took the lead in planning and implementing tire abatement events, which are held every two years and has resulted in removing over 100 tons of tire waste from streams. In 2012 she worked with the City of Topeka to implement Shawnee County’s first E-Waste recycling event with a total of 45 tons of electronic waste being collected and recycled. She is a 20-year member of Keep America Beautiful and is currently on its Board of Directors. She was nominated for the YWCA Women of Distinction in 2013 for her work in recycling.