In celebration of the 2019 Earth Day, Monday, April 22, and Earth Week, April 22-27, the city of Perry has partnered with the Perry Elementary School, St. Patrick Catholic School and the Perry Hy-Vee in a series of Earth-loving activities for school children.
Aiming to teach students about the importance of recycling and environmental sustainability, the Earth Week series began Wednesday with recycling day. Brian Eiteman, recycling director for the Perry Public Works Department, gave half-hour programs on recycling for third graders at the Perry Elementary School and St. Patrick Catholic School.
Eiteman showed students products that are made with recycled materials, such as lunchroom trays, composite decking and water bottles. He spared students the unsettling fact that Perry now pays $75 a ton to International Paper in Des Moines to accept the city’s recycling and pays $37 a ton to the Metro Park West Landfill north of Perry to dump the city’s garbage.
“Both schools have been collecting toilet paper tubes to recycle,” said Larry Vodenik, Hy-Vee community event coordinator. “They presented these to Brian today, and one lucky classroom got to load the tubes into the recycling truck.”
Perry Elementary School Principal Ned Menke said a grand total of 15,054 tubes were collected by all classes. He thanked the top five classes:
- Emily Henry’s fifth graders collected 2,303 tubes.
- Adam Kealhofer’s fourth graders amassed 1,685 tubes.
- Cindy Thompson’s first graders gathered 944 tubes.
- Lyndsey Buhrman’s second graders piled up 878 tubes.
- Linda Huntington’s kindergartners bagged 802 tubes.
Kayla Brown’s third grade class was awarded the honor of filling the recycling truck with the thousands of tubes.
“The kids were ecstatic,” said Daisy Diaz, whose Perry Elementary School third graders collected toilet paper tubes for the event. “Every day we counted up our tubes and made a subtraction problem to see how many more we needed to reach our goal. It worked great with our math, because they are learning three-digit subtraction with re-grouping.”
Thursday will see Perry City Administrator Sven Peterson chatting with students at the Perry Elementary School and St. Pat’s about Perry’s ecologically friendly programs, including recycling, energy-saving street lights, the new wind turbines, the solar-powered gator and other green technologies.
Friday’s event, weather permitting, will be Tree Day, Vodenik said. Students from the Perry Elementary School and St. Pat’s will gather at 1 p.m. to see Perry Parks and Recreation Director John Anderson plant two trees using the city’s new tree spade. Anderson will give a short program on the importance of trees and the development of the city nursery.
Vodenik said Hy-Vee is donating the trees for Tree Day.
Earth Day was first celebrated in 1970 and now includes events in more than 193 countries.
