In Leaders UNITE today, the students at the International Preschool of Raleigh began a very special community project about recycling dead markers, called Crayola ColorCycle. I first heard about this project from Ms. Deanna, who showed me a post on Facebook saying that 15 pounds of dead markers can be recycled, but are often not. But we can fix this! One way is by participating in the Crayola ColorCycle program. In this program, schools can collect markers that no longer work and ship these markers to the Crayola company to be recycled and converted into useable energy! The company is collecting all brands of plastic markers (not just Crayola markers), dry erase markers, and highlighters that are dead/no longer working. Once a school collects all of their dead markers in a box, Crayola will send the school a free shipping label to ship these products back to Crayola to be recycled!

In Leaders UNITE, our students made the International Preschool of Raleigh ColorCycle box- which is now located at the front of the school near the recycling bin. Before we made the box, the students read the Facebook post about the ColorCycle program and talked about the importance of recycling markers. Students told me that it is important to recycle for many reasons: it stops the animals in the ocean from getting hurt, it cleans the Earth, it prevents pollution, and it prevents various sicknesses that can arise from waste and pollution. I was happy to see the students thinking about the impact of their actions, and was excited to see that they remembered a lot of information from our previous community project about recycling. After our discussion, the students made the recycling box, which was decorated with information about our project. On the front and back of the box, it explains what can be recycled: dead markers, dry erase markers, and highlighters. On one side of the box, it lists the students’ reasons about why it is important to recycle. On the other side of the box, it tells people to ask Leaders UNITE students if they have any questions about this program. After we made our recycling box, the students tested the markers in their classroom to see if any of them could be added to the box. We found 6 dead markers that we put into our recycling box.

It was great to see the students so interested in recycling, community projects, and making a difference in the world! If you have any dead markers/dry erase markers/highlighters at home and would like to bring them in to add to our recycling box, please do so! The box will be at school for a few months, so there is plenty of time to keep adding to our box.