There were lots of cheers when the 5th grade Lincoln Elementary class unveiled an eco -brick bench to the entire school at an assembly!
They spent the school year using lunchroom waste to create this bench. They would take a lot of the soft plastic like styrofoam lunch trays and food wrappers, clean it and then stuff it into cleaned 2 liter bottles that were donated by Pepsi. Once the bottles were firm, they could use them as bricks.
The whole school was involved since all of the lunchroom materials were sorted into different bins at the end of lunch versus going in the trash can.
The 5th graders tracked the amount of trash included in the bench project and the weight totaled up to 1,354 ounces which is almost 85 pounds! That is a lot of trash being kept out of the landfill. If not properly disposed of or recycled, trash like this can make its way into local watersheds, turning into marine debris which have harmful effects on water quality and wildlife.
Funding for this project was through a NOAA B-WET grant: "Marine Debris: Prevention Today for Healthy Waters Tomorrow." Maia Proulx is the 5th grade teacher who helped lead this project.
The bench will be a new feature at Lincoln Elementary School. The students had a few 'bricks' left over so they made a side table too!
This is a link to an Instagram post we did about it: click here to see it.
.jpg "img-8052-(1).jpg")
.jpg "img-8056-(1).jpg")
.jpg "img-8057-(1).jpg")
