First annual recycling drive across Ouachita Parish Elementary Schools starts October 7th

OUACHITA PARISH (KTVE/KARD) —

Ouachita Green is partnering with Blake Wheelis State Farm Agency to start their first annual Geaux Green Recycling competition. This competition will be happening over 7 different Elementary Schools across Ouachita Parish between all the fifth graders.

The schools participating in the competition will be Drew, George Welch, Highland, Riser, Riverbend, Kiroli, and Boley Elementary schools. All the fifth grade classes will be participating to win prizes for their class and school.

Blake Wheelis has provided the schools with a take home bag with a big plastic bag, donated from MidSouth Extrusion. Students then take them home and start filling these bags with clean, dried number 1 plastic bottles, and then bring these bags back to their school.

The school that collects the most plastic wins a Johnny’s pizza party for their entire fifth grade class with the runner up school winning cheeseburgers/chili dogs from Coney Island. The class with the most recycled plastic also wins a $100 gift card to use towards their class.

So my fifth graders are super excited to be apart of this recycling drive, even after Mrs. Sheila Downhour came and spoke this morning, they could not wait to start saving up their bottles. Ouachita Green and Blake Wheelis are sponsoring our Geaux Green recycling drive, and they gave us these big old bags that are inside of this bag to send home with every fifth grader so they can start recycling their bottles from home, bring them to school, and then we can hopefully, George Welch will save up the most amount of bottles to be able to win our competition.

Sami Valentine | Fifth Grade Science Teacher at George Welch Elementary School

The competition starts October 7th and ends October 26th of 2024, where the winners of the prizes will be announced at the Fall Family Fun Fest at Kiroli Park. If you want to find more information you can visit here to see the flyer or visit ouachitagreen.org.