PRINCETON: Community Park School part of trash recycling project

By Stephanie Vaccaro, Staff Writer
   When Adam Blejwas, world language teacher at Community Park School in Princeton, heard about TerraCycle last year, an organization that converts trash into a range of products, he knew he had to get his school involved.
   ”They take trash from schools, trash that’s not traditionally recycled, and they pay us for it,” said Mr. Blejwas. “So it’s free money for our trash.”
   ”I knew instantly when I spoke to TerraCycle that there was a potential for great success, and I decided to start a program at Community Park,” said Mr. Blejwas.
   The staff and students collect trash, he said, citing examples such as drink pouches, chip bags, empty glue bottles and glue sticks, old pens, dried up markers, broken mechanical pencils, plastic bags, old toothbrushes and toothpaste tubes, including the packaging.
   The work can be a bit gross at times. Juice pouches are really rancid when you put a few thousand of them together, he said.
   ”We separate them into bins and we send them to down to Trenton, that’s where TerraCycle is located,” he said.
   ”TerraCycle pays us two cents for each piece of trash. So the program has gone pretty well, but it wouldn’t have gotten off the ground if it wasn’t for the support of a lot of people. Sharon [the principal] was a little skeptical about collecting trash in school, but she saw the potential,” said Mr. Blejwas, who cited the PTO as having played a large part as well.
   The students of Community Park are the most important component of the success of the program, said Mr. Blejwas. Every single student participates in this as well as their teachers.
   ”So, all of those people we have to thank for this program, which has been a smashing or trashing success,” said Mr. Blejwas.
   All of the money earned goes into an account that funds the school’s garden, said Mr. Blejwas.
   ”The idea that is central to this is that students can take something which is bad — trash — and with a little bit of effort turn it into something that is very, very good. To date, Community Park’s 320 students have sent in 20,056 pieces of trash. We’ve been doing this for about a year. That’s $401.12 that we’ve earned for our gardens. Now $401.12 may not sound like a lot of money, but try to picture the excitement generated by Mrs. Mills’ second grade class when they heard that they had helped to earn over $400 — it was really a special moment.”
   ”Well, it turns out, moreover, that $401.12 is a lot of money,” said Mr. Blejwas. The money will be used to purchase seeds for their vegetable garden.
   ”All along the way, throughout the school year, the children will help care for the garden and watch their food grow. Ultimately, they will understand that they have turned garbage into food,” said Mr. Blejwas.
   ”All of this is a joint effort of everyone that is a part of Community Park,” said Sharon Goldman, principal of Community Park School. “We all work together to make these kinds of things happen, and as a result our children get a wonderful education that is exciting, interesting, and will be long remembered.”
   TerraCycle’s aim is to eliminate the idea of waste by creating national recycling systems for the previously non-recyclable, according to its website. They offer collection programs to collect waste and then convert it into a range of products and materials. The organization was founded in 2001 by Tom Szaky, who was then a 20-year-old Princeton University freshman.
   For more information, see cp.prs.k12.nj.us/terracycle or terracycle.net.