Kingstown Anglican does recycling double

The Kingstown Anglican School has for the second time taken the top spot in the All Islands Recycling Inc (AIR Inc) recycling competition dubbed “On Your Marks! Get Set! RECYCLE!”.{{more}}

The recycling competition encourages students to keep the environment clean, while earning cash for their schools in the process. It involves the placement of recyclable aluminum cans and plastic bottles in specially marked AIR Inc containers that are placed on the compounds of participating schools.

The school collecting the most money at the end of the competition wins.

Having won the competition when it was first held in 2012, the Anglican School again came out on top when the results were announced.

On Monday, April 22, Senior Education Officer with responsibility for primary schools Morine Williams gave students news of their victory, a message that was well received.

For placing first among the 16 schools that took part in the competition, the Anglican school was rewarded with EC$1,500, plus EC$2,046, which is money paid for the plastic beverage bottles and aluminum cans collected over the duration of competition, nine weeks (45 school days).

Commenting on winning the competition, Principal Kenneth Burgin said that the day was special as they were being rewarded for their hard work on World Earth Day (celebrated on Monday, April 22). He stressed that the students and some of their parents were instrumental in helping the school win the much needed money, as parents sometimes sent bottles from home, while students also went out into the wider community and collected bottles to throw into the receptacles.

“We would have stopped thousands of bottles from being inappropriately disposed of in the environment…the first time around we collected over 12,000 bottles and now we collected even more…we are making sure that our future generations have a good environment, because by assisting in recycling we are doing in our part in protecting the environment,” Burgin said.

He revealed that the last time around, the winnings (EC$1,730 worth of bottles and EC$1,500 first prize) was used to, among other things, install burglar bars to stop the burglaries that were plaguing the school and also to assist in the school feed that was held after the school’s annual sporting meet..

Meanwhile, moving up one spot to second place was the C. W. Prescod Primary School. They received EC$650 for their bottles collected and EC$1,000 for placing second.

In third place this time around was the Lodge Village Government School, having collected EC$522 worth of bottles. They were given EC$500 for placing third.

Schools not placing in the top three will receive payments ranging from $114 to $515 for the collection of bottles.

During this round of competition, over 70,000 bottles were collected by the 16 schools, while the top three schools accounted for over 50 per cent of the bottles collected. Over the life of the competition, which started in late November 2012 and ran up to March 26, just over 108,000 bottles have been collected by the 16 schools.

Dwight Hillocks of AIR Inc on Tuesday encouraged all participating schools to continue their efforts to preserve the country’s beauty.

Hillocks stressed that Air Inc is extremely proud to see the number of persons participating in the competition and said “we are looking forward in seeing who the top three would be during this end of year term”.

The competition resumes on Monday, May 6, 2013. The schools are paid $4.80 per kilogram for clean bottles and aluminum cans and $2.40 cents for dirty bottles and dirty aluminum cans.