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Lower School Embarks on Earth Day Project to Recycle Electronics

Ranney’s Lower School kicked off Earth Day during the week of April 22, 2013 with a new recycling project that focuses on electronics. In collaboration with Terracycle, which provides free waste-collection programs for hard-to-recycle materials, students and their families are collecting unwanted or no longer useable iPads, iPods, cameras, calculators and more through the end of the school year.

For each item collected, Terracycle rewards the school with points that can be redeemed for a monetary donation to a charity or nonprofit organization. The children will vote on where the funds go. “One option may be to use the funds to create new recycling programs here at the school,” said Mrs. Judith Salisbury, Lower School Science Teacher.

Renata Bodner (Ethan ’25) came up with the idea for the project when she stumbled across the Terracylce website online. “We all try to do our part by leaving our recyclables at the curb, or even bringing them to a recycling center or other drop-off sites, but [Terracycle] allows us to go a step further and recycle items that a town may not take,” she says. “And even better, everybody involved in it wins.”

Many items can be recycled, so why focus on electronics? “A lot of people don’t think about recycling their electronics, but they are actually quite useful,” explained Mrs. Salisbury. Electronics are also worth more points from Terracycle compared with bottle caps and juice pouches, for example, and cleaner to store on campus.

Families can support the project by sending in their recycleable electronics (a list of acceptable items is below). Two bins are available for dropping off items in the Lower School (at the Commons and outside Mrs. Salisbury’s science lab, room 127) until the end of the school year.

Mrs. Bodner said she believes it’s important for children to learn about recycling at an early age. “It's all about habits. The earlier you start on a habit, good or bad, the greater the chances you'll stick to it for life,” she explains. “Although this is an experimental program, I hope to get the children engaged and enthusiastic about it. I hope they feel that they can make a difference at any age and realize that no action is too small.”

To keep them motivated, Mrs. Bodner plans to chart the collection progress so that the children can see what they’ve collected so far and how many points they are earning (which are calculated by weight). “Showing them the progress may give them an idea of their collective impact and encourage them to keep going,” she says.

“In a wealthier environment, consumerism is usually higher and so is waste,” adds Mrs. Bodner. “I hope that the children will get in the habit of thinking about the impact they have on the planet from the moment they purchase something … and hopefully they will start thinking of reducing other types of waste as well such as energy, water and other resources.”

Adds Mrs. Salisbury, “The children are quite excited about this project and we hope that it will serve as a springboard for future recycling brigades at Ranney.”

Below is a list of acceptable items to bring in for the Terracycle project (please make sure to remove important/personal information from your devices before bringing them in):

 - Laptops, notebook computers, netbooks, tablets, e-readers (no desktops please). Please drop off laptops at the Lower School science lab, room 127.
 - Any makes and models of cell phones: smart phones, flip phones, messaging phones, such as SideKicks®
 - iPods, any mp3 players.
 - Cameras, digital cameras, camcorders.
 - All makes and models of GPS units.
 - All makes and models of graphing calculators.
 - All makes and models of webcams, plastic wireless computer keyboards, plastic computer keyboards, plastic wireless computer mice, plastic wired computer mice, plastic electronic packaging.
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Ranney School

235 Hope Road
Tinton Falls, NJ 07724
Tel. 732.542.4777
Our mission is to know and value every child, nurturing intellectual curiosity and confidence, and inspiring students to lead honorably, think creatively, and contribute meaningfully to society. 

We envision Ranney School as a nurturing learning community, in which families, faculty, alumni, and all of Ranney’s constituents collaborate to know and value every child, foster individual talents, sustain powerful connections between children and adults, and graduate resilient, globally-minded citizens.