Community answers call to recycle phone books
Students at Cayman Prep with some of the thousands of telephone directories they collected
(CNS): Through this year’s “Yellow2Green” recycling programme, held for four weeks over February and March, people all across Cayman collected and handed in more than 21,000 used telephone directories. Since the initiative began more than five years ago, more than 170,000 directories have been recycled, keeping them out of the George Town landfill.
This year 15 primary schools participated in the Yellow2Green School Challenge.
“We were invited to talk to young students at their school general assemblies about recycling and their enthusiasm was inspiring,” said Melanie Shambaugh, marketing manager for Cayman Islands Yellow Pages.
“They remind us, recycling is easy and fun; and when we do it together, we can really make a difference. We are thankful to each and every school faculty member, parent and student for their support around this community effort.”
The directory company said the goals of the Yellow2Green programme were to increase environmental awareness and protection; educate children on the importance, benefits and responsibilities of recycling to both their community and the environment; and reduce waste in the landfill.
Both faculty and parents were instrumental in educating students on the importance of recycling and encouraging the young people to gather as many old directories as possible. This week, the top three participating primary schools, which collected the most directories, per student enrolled, will be awarded cash prizes.
Truth For Youth School has earned the grand prize of $1,500, North Side Primary School placed second and will receive $1,000, and Triple C School gets the third place award of $700. In addition, Cayman Prep earned an honourable mention for collecting the most directories overall at 3,561.
The class that collected the most directories, at each participating school, per student enrolled, will also receive a Subway sandwich party. Plus, these five students collected the most directories across the entire Yellow2Green School Challenge, and will receive gift certificates to Books & Books: Sashalee Taylor, from Truth For Youth; Jaydon Dilbert, North Side; Mia Groves, Savannah Primary School; Jonathan Scott, Cayman Prep; and Arianna Watler, First Baptist Christian School.
The collected books have already arrived in Tampa, Florida, via Thompson Tropical Shipping. They are set to be 100% recycled by GreenFiber into natural fiber insulation that is used in homes to aid in energy efficiency. GreenFiber is North America’s leading natural fiber manufacturer and they have been working with communities across the USA, and now in the Caribbean, to help keep more than one million tons of paper out of the landfills.
Category: Environment
Why are physical phone books still printed? For whom? Total waste of time, energy, and resources. Use the app.
100% agree. I instructed the front reception a few years ago to refuse the 200 books they used to drop off. We now get by with 10 copies per year. The phone app or the website gives you everything you need and its generally going to be up to date unlike a once a year updated book.