Pizza Gets Hugh Mercer Students Excited About Recycling

The Fredericksburg Clean and Green Commission and R-Board sponsored a paper recycling contest at the school this month.

by Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT

When the kindergarteners in Ashley Rogers’ class at Hugh Mercer Elementary School learned that they could win a pizza party for recycling the most paper, they knew they were up to the challenge.

“They were like, ‘Oh, we got this,’” Rogers said.

Instead of tossing their arts and crafts projects and completed worksheets in the trash can, the students collected the paper in a bin to be recycled.

Students in Ashley Rogers kindergarten class celebrate winning a pizza party on Friday, May 17. Photo by Adele Uphaus.

After two weeks, they’d amassed 90.47 pounds of paper — and earned their pizza party.

The Fredericksburg Clean and Green Commission and the Rappahannock Solid Waste Management Board, which serves Fredericksburg City and Stafford County, sponsored a school-wide recycling contest at Hugh Mercer Elementary this month.

Hope Mikelson, the R-Board’s community outreach supervisor, said the contest was a pilot program that she hopes to take to Stafford elementary schools next year.

“We want to get the children involved in recycling early on, so they’ll carry it on through their lives,” Mikelson said.

The whole school participated in the contest and the classroom at each grade level that recycled the most paper after two weeks won a pizza party on Friday, May 17.

Hope Mikelson, community outreach supervisor with the R-Board, delivers certificates and pizza to Lily Goldberg's 2nd grade class.

Altogether, Hugh Mercer students recycled 3,152 pounds of paper, Mikelson said.

Lily Goldberg’s first grade class was responsible for 319 pounds of that total.

“On the day they announced the contest, we jumped up and cleaned out our desks,” Goldberg said.

While pizza was a prime motivator for the students, second grade teacher Kristen Swisher — whose class recycled 85.25 pounds of paper — said she also made sure to talk with them about how recycling is a way to minimize the amount of new resources and energy they use.

“We talked about how we have to protect the Earth because we could lose it,” she said.

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