Powell River area elementary school students responded in record numbers to a battery recycling challenge. Texada Quarrying Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Lafarge Canada Inc., organized the program through School District 47 to mark Earth Day.
Lafarge challenged elementary schools to see which could collect the most batteries to stop them from going into a landfill. The participating schools were James Thomson, Henderson, Grief Point, Edgehill and Texada elementary schools and Kelly Creek Community School.
The challenge was for students and staff to collect old batteries. All the schools participated for two weeks. At the end of the challenge, on Monday, April 22, Earth Day, the batteries were collected, counted and winners at each school were declared. The winning class at each school will receive a pizza party, compliments of Lafarge Texada Quarrying, for all their hard work.
The total battery count for all the area schools was 14,746.
Counts from the schools were:
• Henderson, 103 students. The winning class from Henderson was the division three (grade three/four), with 5,910 batteries. The school collected 8,722 batteries in total.
• Grief Point, 339 students, 2,810 batteries.
• Texada, 23 students,1,588 batteries.
• Kelly Creek, 100 students, 875 batteries.
• Edgehill, 263 students, 431 batteries.
• James Thomson, 162 students, 320 batteries.
“This was very informative for the students and staff at each of the schools, on how much battery waste goes into our landfill,” said Warren Kiland, maintenance manager at Texada Quarrying, who organized the event. “Lafarge thanked the students and teachers for participating in this program and asked them to continue with the program. Some students have started to save for next year already.”
