Kalaheo Elementary School was recently awarded a recycle bin grant to facilitate their recycling program.
Traci Sullivan, Kalaheo School Parent Teacher Student Association president who wrote the grant, said the school was the only one in Hawai‘i to receive a grant.
“They’ve awarded 25 recycling bins to the school to be used for special events,” Sullivan said.
Sullivan hopes to use the bins at the Waimea Town Celebration in February and also to set up a recycling program at Coconut Marketplace.
The Bin Grant Program is coordinated by the National Recycling Coalition and the Coca-Cola company and is designed to support and promote community recycling in the United States, according to a prepared statement.
“The response to this grant program has been phenomenal,” Kate Krebs, executive director of the NRC, said in the statement. “The extent and diversity of applications solidly demonstrates how citizens across the nation are addressing recycling on a community level.”
The Bin Grant Program provides recycling bins directly to the schools and individuals. Recipients were chosen on criteria including where the bins are likely to have the most impact on recovering recyclables, ability of recipients to sustain their program in the future and their intention to support collection programs with recycling education and promotion.
“The number of applicants for bin grants far exceeded our expectations,” Scott Vitters, director of sustainable packaging at Coca-Cola, said in the statement.
“The Bin Grant program ultimately will help us reach our long term goal to recycle or reuse 100 percent of the packages that we place in the market by increasing collection of valuable recyclables such as aluminum.”
Sullivan said the bins will supplement the recycling program already in place at the school.
“Last year we made over $11,000 recycling HI-5 bottles, cans and plastics,” she said. “The money goes back directly into student fund-raising accounts.”
Not only does the recycling program at the school generate funds for the students, but it “diverts waste from the landfill and is a good lesson for the kids,” she added.
Bins for the current program are available in front of Kalaheo Elementary 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Sullivan expects the new bins to arrive sometime in February.
The NRC and the Coca-Cola company plan to offer bin grants twice a year in the fall and spring. For more information on how to apply for a bin grant, go to www.nrc-recycle.org.
• Rachel Gehrlein, staff writer, can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 225) or rgehrlein@kauaipubco.com.
