École Léandre-LeGresley is one of many schools in New Brunswick participating in Encorp’s Recycling Heroes in School program – a recycling program aimed at helping schools in the province recycle their deposit-bearing beverage containers. Their dedication and effort throughout the 2023-2024 school year made them one of the top 5 performing schools in the program! Through consistent in-school recycling and impressive community involvement, École Léandre-LeGresley managed to recycle nearly 50,000 beverage containers during the school year!
Recycling in School
To help with fundraising and minimize the school’s impact on the environment, beverage containers were collected in the school to be recycled at a redemption centre. Together, a small group of students (the school’s Recycling Ambassadors!) worked with the custodian to visit each Recycling Hero bin once a week and help make sure that beverage containers were separated from other recyclables and prepared to go to their local redemption centre, Recyclage Caraquet.
They found that at the beginning of the school year, the Recycling Hero bins were often filled with general recyclables and not just deposit-bearing beverage containers. After noticing this issue, students made sure to put up posters by the bins explaining what items should be put in them, and the teachers took some time to discuss with students the difference between beverage container recycling and other forms of recyclable waste. These simple steps made a big difference in ensuring that beverage containers were getting properly recycled!
How Community Involvement Can Make a Big Impact
The success of the recycling program at Léandre-LeGresley was due not only to the involvement of students and staff in school, but also parents. The support of the Parent Teacher Association (PTA) helped identify the opportunities and challenges of different recycling models that could work for the school to help with fundraising efforts. Many hands make light work, and with the PTA’s involvement, a plan for a community-wide collection/bottle drive day was established.
Léandre-LeGresley focused on a single community collection day, where teams of parents, students, staff and volunteers worked together to collect refundable beverage containers. Promotion and communication played a key role in planning this community-wide collection. The date and details of the event were widely publicized on social media. The school asked people interested in donating their deposit-bearing beverage containers to leave them at the end of their street during the pick-up date and time, and then volunteers collected them and brought them back to the school for sorting. Organizers were careful about how they split up, with one team on each side of busy streets to increase safety and reduce back-and-forth on busy roads.
After collecting the beverage containers from community members, they were brought back to the school and sorted. Volunteers started with collection in the morning and helped until late afternoon/early evening to finish sorting and packing the beverage containers. Recyclage Caraquet generously loaned a trailer to the school to help facilitate bringing the collected beverage containers back to the redemption centre.
As part of the Recycling Heroes in School program, Encorp provided Léandre-LeGresley with two stipends of $150 which were used to help thank volunteers who helped with the planning and execution of the community-wide event. Lunch and snacks were provided to support volunteers who spent most of their day helping with the event.
After the Big Day
Community members who missed the collection day were encouraged to bring their beverage containers to Recyclage Caraquet. As part of the Recycling Heroes in School program, Léandre-LeGresley has an account set up at the redemption centre, which means that anyone going to the redemption centre can ask that their beverage containers get donated to the school’s account. The event organizers helped spread the word on social media so that people who missed the event could still donate to the school throughout the school year.
Investing Back Into the School
École Léandre-LeGresley plans to invest the money raised from beverage container recycling into an outdoor school. The project consists of installing some outdoor picnic tables, benches and maybe even a blackboard, allowing the teachers to teach outside. The goal is to promote environmental sustainability and give students many opportunities to connect with nature and the outdoors while learning about the standard curriculum.
Amazing Results
École Léandre-LeGresley’s students, parents, teachers, and broader community all came together for impressive recycling results. Their in-school and community bottle drive recycling programs continue to give back to students by funding their outdoor school. Encorp is thrilled to support this initiative and looks forward to seeing how much they manage to recycle this school year.
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.
