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Schools

Concerned Parent Brings Lesson and Funds to Cedar Hill

Debbie Kozell works with TerraCycle to turn garbage into useful products, and to raise money for the Home and School Association.

  • Name: Debbie Kozell, a mom at Cedar Hill Elementary School, started a program that not only benefits the home and school, but teaches kids how to recycle.
  • Initiatives: Working with TerraCycle, a NJ based company that turns hard to recycle trash into green products, Kozell has enlisted the help of students, families, teachers and administrators to “upcycle Capri Sun juice pouches, Lays chip bags, and Skittles and Swedish Fish and anything made by the Mars Candy Company.” The school is also upcycling Elmer’s Glue. According to video on the company’s website, by TerraCycle founder, Tom Szaky, “When you upcycle something you see every part of the waste product as value. At TerraCycle we do whatever we can to keep waste materials intact and make new products using almost no energy at all. For example, we package our cleaners and fertilizers in used soda bottles.” Through recycling programs around the world, TerraCycle strives to eliminate waste.
  • How it works:  Cedar Hill School is collecting a variety of hard to recycle items. “All that stuff, I box up and I send it to TerraCycle,” explained Kozell. Instead of destroying the items, which is what happens to most recycled items, “They wash them, and they sew them and they do all that in NJ, and it was created by a person in NJ, and they create products like backpacks,” Kozell said. In exchange for Cedar Hill collecting the garbage that will become new products, “They give us points and the points go towards money that is sent back to the school.” Benefit:  “So far we have made $141 for our school and we have kept a ton of garbage out of the landfill,” said Kozell. “The kids are very excited. They’re great….It keeps the garbage out of the landfill and it teaches the kids how important it is to recycle.”

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