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Trinity Elementary Students Plan Recycling Contest

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SUNCOAST NEWS STAFF REPORT

Published: November 5, 2008

TRINITY - Students at Trinity Elementary School, RESORCE Recycling Club and Accurate Waste Systems are teaming up to bring to the public's attention to America Recycles Day.

The students at the elementary school will have a weeklong contest starting next week leading up to the recycling day on Saturday, Nov. 15, according to Kimberly Brown of RESORCE.

The school will split its 640 students into eight teams for the contest, Brown explained. The teams will try to collect the most out-of-service mobile phones, spent batteries, empty ink jet cartridges and colored aluminum can tabs.

RESORCE intends to create earrings out of the colored aluminum tabs. More than three years ago, RESORCE founder Monica Dear was shown the recycled earrings by a friend. "The earrings were so unique. The ones I saw were red and green and combined with beads. They were such a neat Christmas gift. This contest might be the only way we can collect enough of them to start finding someone who can put them together for us into earrings."

Anyone interested in making the tabs into earrings for the non-profit organization can call the current club president, Lew Corvene, at 727-869-2881.

After the contest, RESORCE and Accurate Waste will be available at the Gulf View Square mall, in Port Richey, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 15.

People who sign up on Nov. 15 as RESORCE members will receive free blue bags from Accurate Waste.

America Recycles day was created to encourage folks to remember the three R's: Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.

Many of Accurate Waste's customers are residents in the Trinity East and Trinity West subdivisions.

In June Accurate Waste began its own pilot curbside, all-inclusive paper recycling project with more than 8,000 participants, in addition to the regular blue bag customers, according to Steve Serafino, the owner of Accurate.

The nonprofit RESORCE has become known for its annual phone book recycling drives, which collected 17 tons of phone books in July 2008.

These books were diverted from landfills or incinerators to be sent to a paper mill recycling plant in the southeast.

RESORCE leaders hope Pasco will follow the example of Alachua and Manatee counties which have some of the highest recycling rates in the state. Many Pasco residents have migrated from Northern states that have mandatory recycling programs.

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