Hawthorne School Reduces, Reuses and Recycles

Submitted by Elmhurst Community Unit School District 205.

Elmhurst, IL - The Hawthorne community collected and sent 584.1 pounds of plastic film and bags to Trex in 80 school days!

Trex, the plastic-to-laminate recycling manufacturer, uses about 1,000 bags, or 12 lbs. of plastic, to make a planter like the one the school earned. The Hawthorne planter is now filled with 2nd grader’s potato plants. It will be placed in the school’s outdoor classroom later for summer planting. Students and staff urge the community to keep recycling by taking your plastic bags and other plastic film to Mariano’s Jewel and Kohl’s, which are the local stores who partner with Trex.

Hawthorne has also recycled 61,454 juice pouches since 2013. They are shipped to Terracycle, a company that finds unique ways to reuse or “upcycle” waste instead of sending it to landfills. They use juice pouches to make notebooks, lunch bags and other products. They reward participating organizations by partnering with charities. This allowed Hawthorne to provide the following to global support groups in the school’s name: bring clean water to 27 people for a year and 9 people for a week; plant 20 trees in an American forest and adopt 10 acres of wildlife land; and reduce 10 tons of carbon from the atmosphere. (These donations were selected by the Eco-Explorers club members.)

Hawthorne also composts about 24 pounds of fruit and veggie scraps DAILY! It uses the composted soil in the gardens of its outdoor classroom, with 2nd graders planting seeds and growing vegetables which are used for a salad lunch in May and soup making in the fall. During the daily lunch hour, to lower landfill waste, Hawthorne also pours out extra liquids and recycle paper, aluminum and milk cartons.

Since 2013, when the school began to compost and recycle, and with the efforts of custodians, principal, teachers and students, Hawthorne’s lunchtime garbage has dropped from 16,000 pounds to about 9,000 pounds per year.

The school will continue to strive to reduce, reuse, and recycle in many ways to make the Earth a cleaner place!