Students take on recycling initiative

When the task was put before Carol Raney to apply for a grant to help the community through AL200, she wanted to pick a project the community was passionate about. Her fifth-grade students at Russellville Elementary School provided her with the perfect idea: recycling.

“They noticed how much trash we have at the school. It’s a problem that’s been bothering them for two years,” Raney said.

Taking their lead, Raney has made the effort to educate students at RES about recycling using the four R’s: reduce, reuse, recycle and rethink. She said she wants them to reduce the amount of trash that they make, reuse items when possible, recycle what they can and rethink what they throw in the trash.

She has three recycle bins set up in her classroom – one for cardboard, one for plastic and one for paper. Students bring items in daily to deposit those bins, which will be taken to a recycling center.

“My goal is for these fifth-graders to teach the younger students about recycling and other schools and their families as well. I want these kids to lead others to be conscientious about recycling,” Raney said.

Students said the City of Russellville should make more of an effort to recycle.

“There’s not much that you can’t recycle,” Brennon Thorpe said.

A representative from Shoals Solid Waste Recycling, which serves Franklin County, came to RES and spoke with the students about recycling – about how to stop creating so much pollution and how to reuse things to reduce the amount of trash.

In the classroom, Raney has been combining recycling education with STEM activities to get the students engaged and involved in multiple areas of learning. One activity she said students have been enjoying is coding the Dash robot to travel different maps and complete tasks related to recycling. They have also made posters about what they have learned.