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Students in the Afterschool Centers on Education (ACE) Recycle Me classes have been collecting and preparing plastic bottles at Snyder Intermediate School for this year’s bottle challenge. The Siberian class is pictured with the collected bottles. Pictured are (l-r) Michael Cheyne, ACE support staff Jose Morales, Idalee Rodriguez, Gabby Garcia, Xavier Sigarillo, Bryan Block, Christoper Havner, Daenin Smith and ACE facilitator Isrell Lawson.
The Snyder Recycling Center, the City of Snyder, Snyder Primary School, Snyder Intermediate School, Snyder Junior High School and Snyder High School have partnered to host the annual bottle challenge to celebrate Earth Week.
Each school will hold its own contest and the City of Snyder will provide recycling containers to collect the plastic bottles. The Snyder Recycling Center will keep track of the bottle count among each campus.
There will also be an Earth Day assembly April 21 at Tiger Stadium, where the winners will be announced.
Snyder Junior High School principal Jorge Mendez said he believes students and teachers at the school are doing a great job.
“We have only been collecting bottles since April 5 and students and teachers are doing a great job in helping keep Snyder clean,” Mendez said.
Herb Spencer, who is organizing the high school’s challenge, said the reason they began collecting bottles early was to bring awareness to recycling.
“There are billions of plastic bottles throughout the United States,” Spencer said. “Every year that just goes in trash cans. That can be recycled and be reused.”
He said that during last year’s bottle challenge, high school students only had one week to collect bottles and collected 32,400 bottles.
Spencer said the high school’s life skills students have been gathering, counting and preparing the bottles for the recycling center.
“It’s a wonderful opportunity for my life skills kids to work and communicate effectively counting,” said Spencer.
Isrell Lawson and Jose Morales, with Snyder ISD’s Afterschool Centers on Education, said the students in the Recycle Me classes at Snyder Intermediate School have been doing well collecting and preparing the plastic bottles for the challenge between the fourth and fifth grades.
“They’ve dedicated a lot of time and they’ve enjoyed it and Mr. Morales has been really good at leading them,” Lawson said.
Morales said the competition between the grades is very close and together the school has collected almost 24,000 bottles.
“This is the sixth year having our Earth Day bottle challenge to raise awareness on the importance of recycling,” said Carolyn Torres, who leads the challenge at Snyder Primary School. “Students learn that by recycling plastics, they can positively impact our environment by reducing waste, conserving natural resources and conserving energy.”
Bottles made of No.1 and No. 2 plastic may be taken to any of the schools to count toward a specific grade’s total.