Perry High students bring recycling back to county schools after city cuts service
After the city of Perry canceled its recycling services last spring, three Perry High School seniors started the Houston County Recycling Initiative, providing six elementary schools, one middle school and one high school in Houston County’s school district with paper recycling this school year.
In itss first year, the Houston County Recycling Initiative has saved an estimated 3,000 pounds of paper from going to the landfill, according to Daniel Chun, one of the founders of the initiative.
The initiative began as a one-day back-to-school paper recycling drive organized by senior class president Roxie Singleton and Chun, the senior class vice president. Community members and students brought old papers and homework from the previous school year to recycle. Singleton and Chun took the collected paper to Happy Hour Service Center, a non-profit in Warner Robins that operates the county’s main recycling center and provides job training and employment opportunities for people with developmental disabilities.
“We had really been looking for something to jump on in terms of community service,” Chun said. “After the city of Perry discontinued their recycling services on May 1, 2024, we just knew that we wanted to offer that kind of solution, offer that ability for teachers and students alike to recycle their paper because that service was not being offered anymore. Paper is obviously a big waste (source) that is used in schools on all levels.”
After the initial event, Chun and Singleton went to lunch with another student leader and friend, Bryson Griner, Perry High School’s president of Future Business Leaders of America. It was then they decided to join forces and expand their efforts to more than just a one day event at one school, and the Houston County Recycling Initiative was born.
FBLA members started gathering boxes from the community to reuse as recycling bins and distributed one to every classroom at Perry High School.
“We made about 90 boxes that went into every single classroom,” Chun said. “Our goal with that was to make recycling something so easy that (students and teachers) couldn’t not do it.”
Every week, FBLA members gathered the paper from the classrooms and emptied it into larger, outdoor bins provided by Happy Hour, which is the primary partner for the initiative.
“These seniors were really the backbone of this initiative, and they’ve done a tremendous job,” said Bruce Hullett, spokesperson for Happy Hour Service Center. “It’s a great partnership because when we bring back (paper) from those schools, it provides work opportunities for our special needs population.”
Once everything was running smoothly at Perry High School, the group began expanding to elementary schools.
“If we want to change the culture, we had to start with the younger generations,” Chun said. “That’s obviously where that growth and that inspiration is instilled.”
But it was more than just about recycling paper, it was about education.
“Our goal was not only do the boxes and implement them into each classroom, but also teach them,” Chun said. “We weren’t sure if recycling was being taught correctly, or if it was even being taught at all in their curriculum.”
They contacted the principals at several elementary schools in Houston County and asked if a group of the FBLA members could visit, and many agreed. The group presented a PowerPoint to around 25 high-achieving students at the six elementary schools involved, explaining what recycling is, why it’s important and how students can help.
“We (told the kids), ‘you guys are part of the solution,’ and that really got them excited,” Chun said. “We really wanted to emphasize that they are the leaders of the school and therefore the leaders of their community, and so I think it’s really important to instill that into them at (a) young age, so that they can continue that sense of stewardship and serving others and the environment around them as they go into middle school and high school.”
The initiative team explained how the recycling program would work: students would put used paper in the classroom boxes, and every week, the contents would be emptied into the larger bins provided by Happy Hour. Happy Hour would then pick up the bins and take the paper to be recycled.
To incentivize the kids to recycle as much as they could, Chun, Singleton and Griner created the “Savor the Paper” competition, and whichever elementary school recycled the most paper would win a field trip to the Atlanta Aquarium and an Earth Day event hosted by CHaRM, or the Center for Hard to Recycle Materials.
This year, Centerville Elementary won the competition, sending 15 students to Atlanta.
The three seniors were also able to compete in FBLA’s state community service project competition, where they placed second, earning them a spot in the national competition this summer in Anaheim, California.
“This project has started off as a community service project in its own right, yet, we have since been able to use it for competition and have progressed to national levels,” Chun said. “I don’t want to sound cocky, but we’re very confident that we have the ability to get first, and hopefully just put Perry High School on the map, and get this initiative really well known and respect in our community.”
The initiative’s efforts reached beyond collecting paper. They also made eco-friendly fire starters known as paper bricks out of the recycled paper they collected. After trial and error, they were able to sell nearly 150 bricks, earning them $710, which will go towards nationals.
“Daniel, Roxie, and Bryson have turned awareness into action, leading a recycling initiative that not only reduces waste but inspires an entire community to care for our environment,” Wesley D. Martin, principal of Perry High School, said in an email. “Their professionalism, organization, and efficiency were encouraging to so many, igniting excitement in several schools across the district. We are so proud of these amazing students!”
Chun said he, Singleton and Griner are passing the torch to underclassmen and expect to see the program continue to grow.
“There are still a lot of schools that are interested in doing this, but didn’t get involved this year for a variety of reasons,” Chun said. “There’s going to be 15 to 20 schools, hopefully, by next year.”
