Rehoboth Elementary students learn about recycling used markers

Rehoboth Elementary School students in Jacquie Kisiel’s fifth-grade science class recently visited Missy Dawson's first-grade class and showed them how to recycle markers.

This inter-class project was created as part of the STEAM RTI program. On a local level, the students are tackling a global problem, finding new energy sources.

Kisiel says, “I am always recycling plastic in my classroom, and I asked my class what I should do with the markers that have dried out. The students thought I should recycle them, but I informed them that markers are unable to be recycled through the single-stream recycling program. I also informed them that over 10 billion non-biodegradable pens are sent to landfills every year.”

As a group, the class decided that now was the time to reduce that number and think about some greener solutions and easy ways to reuse and recycle markers. After some research, the class discovered Crayola’s ColorCycle. For more information, go to http://www.crayola.com/colorcycle.aspx.

Eager to have all of Rehoboth Elementary be a part of Crayola’s program, Kaitlyn Dziak, Karly Anemone and Morgan Green have visited kindergarten through fifth-grade  classrooms and taught their fellow students a mini science lesson on Crayola’s ColorCycle process. Now they are in the process of collecting and counting every used marker in the school. Next they will be packing a box of markers, printing a prepaid label and shipping them off to Crayola for future use.