Pizza Gets Hugh Mercer Students in Fredericksburg, VA Excited About Recycling

Hope Mikelson, the R-Board’s community outreach supervisor, said the contest was a pilot program that she hopes to take to Stafford elementary schools next year.

SEATTLE (Waste Advantage): When the kindergarteners in Ashley Rogers’ class at Hugh Mercer Elementary School learned that they could win a pizza party for recycling the most paper, they knew they were up to the challenge. “They were like, ‘Oh, we got this,’” Rogers said. Instead of tossing their arts and crafts projects and completed worksheets in the trash can, the students collected the paper in a bin to be recycled.

After two weeks, they’d amassed 90.47 pounds of paper — and earned their pizza party. The Fredericksburg Clean and Green Commission and the Rappahannock Solid Waste Management Board, which serves Fredericksburg City and Stafford County, sponsored a school-wide recycling contest at Hugh Mercer Elementary this month.

Hope Mikelson, the R-Board’s community outreach supervisor, said the contest was a pilot program that she hopes to take to Stafford elementary schools next year. “We want to get the children involved in recycling early on, so they’ll carry it on through their lives,” Mikelson said. 

Courtesy: www.wasteadvantage.com

• Indorama Ventures, Nigerian Breweries and Genesis Energy Partner to Develop One of Africa’s Largest rPET Production Facilities
• World Recycled Metal Market 2026 Analysis and Forecast to 2035
• Rio Tinto's Kennecott copper mine suspends operations as contract worker dies
• Rise in Plastic Scrap Imports into Türkiye Spark Environmental Concerns