Aurora students snare scholarship funds with recycling project
The name rhymes, the function worked and the machine was enough to earn scholarship money and a chance at a national prize for a group of Aurora junior high students.
Eight girls in eighth grade at Bednarcik Junior High in Oswego Unit District 308 worked this year to build the “Clean Green Recycling Machine” and enter it in the Land & Water category of the Lexus Eco Challenge.
The 13th annual event, sponsored by Lexus and Scholastic, invites students in sixth through 12th grade to develop solutions to environmental issues, submit action plans, tabulate results and compete nationally for a share of $500,000 in scholarships and grants.
The girls from Bednarcik claimed $875 each, as well as $1,000 for their school and $1,000 for their energy and conservation club leader, science teacher Amy Truemper. And they could be eligible for up to $30,000 more if the Clean Green Recycling Machine wins national honors set to be announced April 16.
The girls have high hopes after learning to build and program the machine — an interactive recycling bin — to get their peers to recycle more plastic bottles and aluminum cans. Jensie Coonradt of Aurora, the team's leader and coding expert, said their experiment with adding the machine to the Bednarcik lunchroom proved it helped change student behavior.
During seven days before the machine was in action, Jensie and her teammates counted 92 plastic bottles and aluminum cans in the trash and 89 in recycling. During seven days after the machine stepped in, students threw zero bottles and cans in the trash and recycled 203. The machine combines a motion sensor to determine when someone has recycled an item with a tablet where each recycler could enter his or her student ID to earn points in the “Dog Paw” system the school uses to give rewards.
“We found that it really wasn't the prizes, it was more or less the interactivity of the bin” that got students excited to use it, Jensie said.
The machine was a few feet away from the trash can, but students took the extra steps to put beverage containers in their proper place.
“They felt congratulated for recycling and it made them take the extra effort,” Jensie said.
Students began working on their entry in September, meeting during lunch twice a week as well as at home, Truemper said. Team members' skills in art, poetry, construction and engineering helped turn their idea into reality.
“We have a diverse group of talents, but all very passionate students who care about the environment and ways they could make a difference,” Truemper said.
The students magnified the effect by launching a “#pausebeforeusingstraws” campaign on social media, creating an environmental goals app accessible through the Google Play Store, organizing community cleanups and reaching out to 17 restaurants and two libraries with educational flyers about the downsides of single-use plastics.
“Our eighth-graders were a little bit reluctant to recycle in the beginning of the year,” Truemper said. But the student-made machine changed that reluctance into excitement. “When they brought the machine out and explained how it worked, there was a line to recycle, so that was cool.”