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East Orange is an urban city in New Jersey, just west
of Newark. The East Orange School District has approximately 12,000 students in about 20 school with grade levels ranging
from preschool through twelfth grade.
Recycling in the East Orange Schools should be a vital
part of helping maintain a balanced environment. Many schools in East Orange (90%) during the 2003-2004 school year did not
recycle such things as paper and cardboard. We, C.A.P. Kids, (Children Against Pollution) saw a need, not only to develop
a recycling program in each school, but to teach the younger children about the necessities of recycling in order to preserve
our environment for future generations to come.
Information gathered from Georgia-Pacific revealed
that paper and cardboard make up 58.9% of materials recycled in the United States. Each person in the United States uses approximately
675 pounds of paper a year. However, more Americans are recycling paper products than ever before, over 43 million tons of
paper. More paper is now recovered in the United States than goes to the landfill, saving more than 90 million cubic yards
of landfill space each year. By recycling 1 ton op paper you save 17 trees, 6953 gallons of water, 463 gallons of oil, 4077
Kilowatt hours of energy (Source: Weyerhaueser Info).
Our school was part of a group of youngsters
from three different schools within the East Orange School District called Project CLEAN UP during the 2002-2004 school years.
We adopted and cleaned up a vacant lot to help beautify the city. We also planted the seeds of knowledge about recycling to
younger children in the city. However, we fell considerably short of our goal to educate a greater population of youth about
the importance of recycling paper and cardboard in their schools because a large amount of time, resources, and energy was
used on the beautification of our vacant lot.
Our school Mildred Barry Garvin, under the name
of C.A.P. Kids, has taken it upon itself to devote our energies to the education and development of a paper recycling program
in every school in our district. We have gained an extensive amount of support from the Department of Public Works in the
City of East Orange,as well as, within our educational community. We have procured the services of Ms. Knadya O'Kelly, Clean
and Green Program Coordinator , to help us with our recycling education program. We need to develop a paper recycling education
program and curriculum which will reach all the East Orange school children enabling them to take pride in their community
and to become environmentally responsible citizens by saving more landfill space for garbage just by recycling paper and cardboard.
We, the Community Problem Solving Team of Mildred Barry Garvin, decided to come together and
form C.A.P. Kids (Children Against Pollution) to address the problems with recycling paper and cardboard in schools and educating
the young children about the importance of recycling in their community.
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