Encorp’s Recycling Heroes in School Program is off to a fantastic start and has recently finished its first semester of school. We’re excited to share with you the amazing progress that the schools in the program have made, and how much they’ve managed to recycle!
NB Schools Recycle More Than 350,000 Beverage Containers
From September to December 2023, 38 schools joined Encorp’s Recycling Heroes in School Program, hoping to improve their waste diversion by recycling deposit-bearing beverage containers. Those schools have made good on that hope, as they managed to collectively recycle more than 350,000 containers over just those first few months of the program. At this rate, we can expect nearly 700,000 containers recycled by the end of the school year, if not even more!
Aside from helping these schools with their beverage container recycling programs, Encorp wants to reward them for putting in the effort to recycle their containers. To do so, Encorp will be giving a reward to the top 5 performing schools in the program, based on the number of containers returned per student in the school. The current top 7 schools can be seen in the graphic at the top of this post, and we can see that a standout in this initiative is Académie Notre Dame, recycling an impressive 438 containers per student in just four months.
Remember that these are not the final results! It’s definitely not too late for schools to get higher on the list before Encorp gives out rewards. In fact, schools will have until the end of May to affect their score by recycling beverage containers.
Get Rewarded For Recycling!
For the schools in the Recycling Heroes in School Program, recycling their deposit-bearing beverage containers provides even more rewards than receiving deposit refunds and positively impacting the environment. As mentioned above, the top 5 performing schools will be given rewards for their efforts, but that’s not all! Encorp will also be giving out some rewards to a couple of random participating schools so that each school in the program has the chance to be rewarded for their recycling.
Of course – there’s still more! In April 2024, Encorp will be matching the funds that the schools enrolled in the program have received from recycling deposit-bearing beverage containers at redemption centres from September 1st, 2023 to March 31st, 2024. For some schools currently in the program this could be an additional $4,000 or more from Encorp come this April.
On top of all that, Encorp recently launched a recycling PSA contest that classes from the schools in the Recycling Heroes in School Program can enter. The contest is both a great way for teachers to engage their students in learning about recycling and an opportunity for those classes to win fun eco prizes.
Get Your Community Involved in Recycling
Are you eager for your school to win a prize or to get as much as possible out of the fund-matching opportunity this year? It’s certainly not too late for your school to up its game and recycle even more containers than it did in the fall 2023 semester. If you find your school itself isn’t collecting very many deposit-bearing beverage containers for it to recycle, there are still ways for your school to recycle even more. The answer is to get your community involved!
There are a couple of ways that your community can help your school collect beverage containers and raise some money. The first way they can help is by participating in bottle drives hosted by your school, which are a fantastic way for your school to quickly raise some money and make sure that everyone’s containers are getting recycled. Another way they can help is by recycling their containers at a redemption centre under your school’s account. As your school has an account with your chosen redemption centre, anyone is able to drop off containers for your school’s account. This will donate the deposit refund for those containers to your school and will contribute both to your school’s performance in the program, as well as towards the matched funds your school will receive in April.
If you would like some help with encouraging community members to recycle their containers for your school or help with setting up and advertising a bottle drive, we have a fundraising toolkit on our website that anyone can use, which includes checklists, guides, and templates (such as the one pictured above).
We’re Looking Forward to Seeing Just How Much These Recycling Heroes Recycle
The future is looking great for the Recycling Heroes in School Program when the participating schools are able to recycle so much in such little time. We’re excited to see how many more schools join the program this semester, and how many containers they’re all able to recycle before the end of the school year! Encorp is looking forward to rewarding all these schools for their recycling efforts, so make sure to collect and recycle as many containers as possible.
If your school isn’t part of Encorp’s Recycling Heroes in School Program but you would like it to be, you can find all the information about the program along with an application form on our school program page.
