Going green

This week’s 2018 Earth Day Bottle Challenge at Snyder ISD was a heated match as students from pre-kindergarten all the way up through 12th grade collected 166,883 water bottles to recycle.
“We are recycling to help the environment,” eighth grader Ke’Odisty Daniels said. “We’re in a challenge against all of the little kids and the high school.”
Snyder Primary School won last year’s challenge and repeated the win this year, collecting 93,932 water bottles. Each primary grade level that placed first, second or third will receive a pizza party, ice cream party or popsicle party, respectively.
In pre-kindergarten, Melinda Dominguez’ class won with 4,392 bottles. Kindergarten was named the overall grade level winner with 28,635 bottles, and Cinthia Solis’ class won with 7,637 water bottles. In first grade, Emily Rollins’ class won with 2,938 bottles. In second grade, Megan Greene’s class won with 7,673 water bottles and was named the overall classroom winner. In third grade, Joanna Lee’s class won with 6,785 bottles.
At Snyder Intermediate School, the fourth grade collected 39,838 bottles, and the fifth grade collected 10,494 bottles for a total of 50,332 bottles. 
Fourth graders will receive an ice cream party, and the top class, which was not announced, will receive a pizza party.
Snyder Junior High School students collected 11,247 bottles. Students received a sweats or athletic shorts pass for every 25 bottles they collected. Teachers received a jeans pass for every 25 bottles they collected.
Snyder High School students collected 11,372 bottles overall. Juniors were the top earners with 5,271 bottles. Seniors finished second with 3,328 bottles. Sophomores finished third with 2,416 bottles. Freshman finished fourth with 357 bottles.
Third grader Miranda Medina said that recycling is important.
“We’re recycling for the contest, but also to clean up the trash in Snyder so places like the park will be clean,” she said. “Recycling means to get things like paper and plastic and put them into a recycle bin.” 
Fifth grader Elayna Cross said that recycling is something that people should do more often.
“We do this contest every year to recycle water bottles because people don’t do it that often,” she said. “We save our water bottles and bring them to school, and they get recycled.”
Though there was competition among the students, senior Susie Ortega said the challenge was about more than winning a competition.
“We’re trying to raise for the main recycling building because it needs to meet a certain recycling standard,” she said. “I’m doing this to help out. It’s important to recycle so that our planet Earth will be clean and so there’s not trash in the parks and oceans. Trash in those places causes animals to eat nasty stuff and die, or people could run over trash and crash into another car.”
Once all of the water bottles are collected, they are sent to the Snyder landfill.
“Once we receive them, they go into the recycle center,” Landfill Senior Clerk Jamie Deere said. “If there’s any lids on them, they have to be removed, and then they put them in a baler, which crushes them and puts them into a bale of plastic. After they’ve been baled, a company comes and gets them and takes them to a recycle plant.” 
Having the recycling competition is a good lesson for students, Deere said.
“As far as benefits for the students, it teaches them the benefits of recycling,” she said. “We’re trying to teach children how to recycle because it saves space in our landfills and is good for our planet.”