‘Keepin’ It Clean in 2017’ Participants Honored for Recycling Initiatives
Seventh and eighth grade students from the Bertha C. Boschulte Middle School (BCBMS) and fourth and fifth grade students from Lockhart Elementary School were honored for their participation in campus-wide recycling initiatives to remove thousands of single-use water bottles, plastic bags and hundreds of aluminum cans from their schools and neighborhoods during the latter part of spring 2017.
The “Keepin’ It Clean in 2017” project was funded through a grant to the University of the Virgin Islands (UVI) from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Marine Debris Program, that paired UVI Masters in Marine and Environmental Science (MMES) students, Kristen Ewen and Vernita Smith, with Topaze Lake of Bertha C. Boschulte Middle School (BCBMS) and Juelis Hodge of Lockhart Elementary School and their students.
Combined, the students removed over 2,500 plastic water bottles, 1,300 plastic bags, and 900 aluminum cans. In a short video PSA created by Bertha C. Boschulte Middle School students and their teacher, Topaze Lake, several students shared the goals of the recycling drive and were later shown assessing those goals by counting the amount of plastic water bottles, plastic bags, and aluminum cans collected. The items were shipped to Terracyle, a stateside company, which recycles and upcycles materials into products that can be reused, like shoes and benches.
More information is available in a news release on the News section of the UVI website -- http://www.uvi.edu/ -and from this direct link.