Mallett School wins $1,000 prize in statewide bottle redemption fund raiser
Andy Mayo, of the CLYNK program and Jo Dipofi, retail service manager, hold up the big "check" for the Mallett School students at an assembly held Tuesday.
FARMINGTON - It's the little school that could.
W.G. Mallett School's recycling students, competing against schools across the state for the most bottles collected, came in second place and won $1,000 prize money, in addition to the $464.15 in reimbursed containers returned.
With 57 schools participating, the Maine Recycling Challenge was held over March and April as a fund raiser coordinated locally by Mallett School's parent-teacher organization. The challenge is sponsored by CLYNK, a Maine bottle redemption company that works in a partnership with Hannaford supermarkets in Maine that provides fund raising programs for community organizations.
On Tuesday, Andy Mayo, vice president retail for CLYNK, congratulated the kindergarten through third-grade students in an assembly and presented a giant "check" showing a total of $1,464.15. In Mallett School's 400-student group, one of two groups of schools competing, top prize of $2,000 went to first place finisher Lincoln Academy's Climate Action Club, which raised $1,488.50 in bottle redemption. Over 310,000 total containers were returned during the contest.
Mallett School Principal Tracy Williams reminded students that in the first few weeks the school was listed in 17th place.
"Did you give up?" Williams asked the students.
"Noooo!" came the students' enthusiastic reply in unison.
"We ended up in second place and won prize money that will be used for the school," Williams explained.
"You guys did an amazing job," Mayo said, "it was a great effort."
Students participating received free plastic bags, each with a stick-on, bar-coded label. Once filled with bottles for redemption, bags are then brought to Hannafords, in this case in Farmington, where bags are scanned and automatically tallied towards Mallett School. A website kept track of Mallett School's amount. The school benefit ended on April 29.
Mallett School's students are told they won second place in the statewide CLYNK contest.
Entries(RSS)
Good job kids
Great job, everyone!! That's what you can do when you work together!!
Excellent work kids! That's what can happen when you set your mind to it and reach those goals! Very proud to hear about this as you should all be of yourselves! ***HIGH FIVES ALL AROUND***
Hard work and well done! The governor wanted to eliminate our bottle bill. Mercifully,he was thwarted.
You didn't give up and it paid off, great job kids !!!
Great job kids,keep up the good work.
A great example of education-through-action! The benefit of this may not be measured on a standardized test, but no one can doubt that this is one lesson Mallet kids won't forget. Kudos to all!
Sticking with good projects always pays off one way or the other! Way to go guys.
This is awesome, nice job everyone. Has anyone heard of Greenbean Recycle (gbrecycle.com) they have doing this since August of 2011 in MIT, Tuft and Brandeis where the students compete in real time and get their 5 cents to their paypal account, charity or student card, you don't need to go to Hannaford or to the grocery store to get your 5 cents, they use the same recycling machine that use a paper receipt but there is no paper receipt, all you do is type your phone number in and you see your impact in real time and get your 5 cents without going to the store.