The Bridge Nursery School at St John’s College in Houghton were the happy recipients of a R10 000 cheque from The Glass Recycling Company (TGRC) for coming third in a provincial glass recycling competition that was launched last year.
National business development officer at TGRC, Innocent Godo said the competition was geared towards encouraging children in the various participating schools to encourage their parents and educators to recycle glass. “The main thing to do is to protect the environment,” said Godo.
“We always go around the country preaching the word. We need to protect our environment because that’s the only legacy we have which we need to pass on. St John’s has been part of the school’s competition in which they did very well.”
Godo said it was important to encourage children to look after the environment at an early age. He added that a number of benefits are seen through recycling glass. “Recycling glass is also energy saving. Recycling it from raw materials consumes more energy than it does from using waste glass.”
The Bridge Nursery School headmistress, Jenny Lobban told the Gazette that glass recycling was a fairly new initiative that she didn’t expect the school would excel in, the way it has. “We entered the glass competition thinking that maybe we can make a difference,” explained Lobban.
“We were absolutely surprised that we came third because we only really collected from March through to the end of October [last year]. The entire school collected from the nursery school right up to the sixth form. The recycling team also did a wonderful job of collating all the bottles they could find, making sure they went into the recycling competition.”
Did your school participate in the glass recycling competition? Tell us by sending an email to tshepisom@caxton.co.za
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