By John E Weare, Keep Alliance Beautiful
ALLIANCE, Neb. - Remember your first pizza party? Mine was while in the “lower room” (kindergarten to fourth grade) at country school. It may have been because everyone read enough that year in the Pizza Hut BOOK IT Program. Anyway, it was one of my first times in a Pizza Hut. We almost ran down the ramp into the special party room on the north side of the Alliance restaurant. A couple guys grabbed the shakers and piled cayenne pepper flakes and parmesan cheese high on their personal pans. We even scored a trip to the salad bar...good times.
If students from Mrs. Topil’s and Mrs. Iske’s classes at Emerson Elementary remember the pizza parties AND the recycling habits required to earn that treat 40 years later later the fertilizer was well worth planting the seed. After working with KAB coworkers to haul and weigh plastic bottles and aluminum cans for the contest, Keep Alliance Beautiful Education Coordinator Emma Steffy tabulated the results putting the classes mentioned above on top.
Drawing from their household, family, friends and workplaces the children brought in a whopping 711 pounds – enough for a typical bale of each material. Topil’s class came out on top with 156 pounds while Iske’s students were not far behind at 130.
The rest of the totals from Emerson and Grandview schools (the only two invited that took part):
Heinz – 108
Ferguson – 91
Gibson – 89
Coupens – 39
Cordell – 34
Miscellaneous (unlabeled or labels fell off prior to weighing) – 22
Wilson – 21
Pfeiffer – 11
Crile – 22
As I mentioned before, pizza is a strong motivator for elementary students. Perhaps nothing could turn the tide toward recycling and the larger goal of an environmentally friendly and proactive American society. Well, there is one precedent germane to the conversation I’d like to highlight.
Recycling and making due without was critical to the war effort from 1942-45. A search for “scrap drive” in Box Butte County newspapers during those years yields 369 results with the majority in 1942-43 issues. The articles I cite came from Alliance’s Times and Herald.
August 11, 1942:The Alliance Boy Scouts joined in the recent scrap metal drive by aiding the city door-to-door collection. A pile east of Central school included everything from hot water boilers to an old sewing machine.
October 9, 1942: Hyannis school was dismissed for a scrap drive (on a Monday). Total is now 110,000 pounds, which is more than 1,000 pounds per capita.
October 13, 1942: Editorial – Rallied in support of a drive that saw more than 80 percent of U.S. newspapers participating.
October 20, 1942: An all school drive from earlier that month netted about 40 tons of metal and rubber. From that drive and others 10 tons of old automobile tires, garden hose, footwear and other articles were trucked to Omaha. From Omaha the salvaged rubber will be sent to factories to be “reclaimed”. This material could not be shipped by rail with scrap metal.
When you are a kid, pizza is a great motivator. For my grandparents’ generation recycling meant doing what they could to stand up to world domination. Recycling is not the perfect or only solution to the physical state of our planet today. Yet, there are days when people won’t even remove trash from their curbside bags, much less agree they can help the environment in their own small way. Thanks for your part in striving to keep Alliance beautiful.