2 THE MOKELUMNE CURRENT SATURDAY, MAY 13, 2017

The students of Heritage, Needham, Reese and Lockeford elementaryschools, Tokay and Lodi high schools, and Benjamin Holt PreparatoryAcademy would like to thank the following sponsors for their support:

By Alondra CazaresHERITAGE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

• 50 billion plastic water bottles are usedeach year.

• Americans consume 8.6 billion gallons ofbottled water.

• Plastic water bottles can take between 400and 1,000 years to decompose.

• It requires 3 times the amount of water toproduce a plastic bottle than it does to fill it.

• Bottled water costs over 1,000 times more todrink than tap water.

By Naomy Salazar LaraHERITAGE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

Earthkeepers is a club atHeritage School that meetsonce a week to clean up ourcampus. The club is run byMs. Jacinto, and has stu-dents who do the work.

For this interview, I spoketo Araceli Villanueva, a fifth-grade Earthkeeper.

Q: Why did you joinEarthkeepers?

A: I joined Earthkeepersbecause I want to help keepthe Earth clean.

Q: What makes Earth-keepers special?

A: Earthkeepers is spe-cial because I want to live ina healthy world.

Q: Why is it good to keepour campus clean?

A: It is good to keep ourschool clean because some-thing can be dangerous andsomebody could get hurt.

Q: Do you like Earth-keepers?

A: Yes, definitely!

Q: How do you clean thecampus?

A: We use buckets andgrabbers to collect the trash.

Q: Who motivated you tojoin Earthkeepers?

A: My teacher, Ms. Jacin-to motivated me to joinEarthkeepers.

Q: What is the hardestpart about being an Earth-keeper?

A: Nothing, everythingis easy and fun.

Q: Do you only clean ourcampus?

A: No, we’ll go outsideand clean the storm drain al-so.

Q: Do you use reusablebags?

A: Yes, of course!

Q: Do you recycle?

A: Of course!

Q: Do you chat withfriends while you’re workingon Earthkeepers?

A: Yes, while I’m clean-ing.

Q: What is your favoritepart about Earthkeepers?

A: My favorite partabout Earthkeepers is clean-ing the school.

Recycling word search

ALUMINUM

ENVIRONMENT

PAPER

RECYCLING

BALING

GLASS

PLASTIC

REUSE

CARDBOARD

NEWSPAPER

PROCESS

SORTING

— By Julio Cortez, Heritage Elementary School

ANGELINA BRIANO/HERITAGE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

Why should studentsjoin the Earthkeepers?

Plastic water bottlesby the numbers

By Melissa MarquezREESE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

According toPlanetSave.com, 87 percentof American adults recycleregularly and nearly 51 per-cent recycle every day. Whilemore and more people arelearning and taking action,there are still many mis-takes as to what goes in thegreen bin or not.

Pizza boxesEven though many people

think that all boxes are recy-clable, surprisingly pizzaboxes aren’t. Pizza boxes aremade from actual cardboard;however, once the pizza isput into the box, all of thecheese and other food in thepizza is soaked into the card-board. Once the food issoaked in the cardboard, itcan’t be recycled because thepaper fibers will not be ableto be separated from the oilsduring the recycling process.

Paper towelsNowadays, paper towels

are generally made from re-cycled paper and the paperfibers get shorter with eachreuse. Paper towels are intheir fourth generation. Pa-per towels are also usuallyused to clean up liquid mess-es, which has the same effectas pizza boxes. Being that pa-

per towels clean up messesthat cannot be recycled any-more because they have ab-sorbed the toxins from yourmess.

Juice boxesWhen it comes to recy-

cling, not all boxes are thesame. This is also due to thequality of the paper, but alsoany materials added to opti-mize the box for consumeruse. This means that thejuice boxes make it difficultto recycle because it’s hardto separate the paper fromthe juice box.

Coffee cupsDid you know? Some esti-

mates are putting the num-ber of cups we dispose of atat least 2.5 billion cups peryear. That’s an enormousamount. The problem is thatthe polyethylene coating in-side the cups that sticks tothe paper part of the cupmakes it almost impossibleto recycle.

Bottle capsThe reason that caps are

to be taken off the bottle isbecause the cap is madefrom a different kind of plas-tic than the bottle, meaningthat the bottle and its capcannot be recycled together,according to PlasticsMakeit-Possible.com.

Five surprisingthings that youcan’t recycle

By Carlee McCabeREESE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

The trip to Cal-Waste wasamazing. Our sixth-gradeclass and the fifth-gradersfrom Heritage School wereable to see and learn what theworkers at Cal-Waste do withall the recycling.

The three arrows on the re-cycling sign mean 1. Reduce, 2.Reuse, 3. Recycle.

Reduce means that you saveenergy and money simply bymaking smarter choices.Reuse means to use somethingthat had been already used.An example is that somebodyreused some old used toolsand made a sculpture out ofit. Recycle means to convert(waste) into reusable material.

All of us got to go lookaround with our guide and seehow recycling works. We alsogot to see a huge pile of recy-cling that was as tall as abouta two-story house. Did youknow they have to move allthat recycling off the floorevery 7 hours? That’s crazy!

After that, we got to look in-side this room that showed awall of what and what not to

recycle. What surprised meand a few of my classmateswas that you can’t recycle piz-za boxes because of all thegrease that soaks into the box.

As a community we need tobe more careful and recyclewhat needs to be recycled andthrow away what needs to bethrown away.

How recycling worksBy Marco GarciaHERITAGE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

There are many steps for re-cycling recyclable things likeplastic, glass, cardboard, etc.Some steps that I’m going totalk about in this article todayare the steps that Cal-Wasteuses every day.

The first step for recyclingis that Cal-Waste sends theirrecycling trucks out into dif-ferent neighborhoods andthey go around collecting allof the RECYCLE ONLY bins.After that, when the truck isfinished collecting all the RE-CYCLE ONLY bins, the recy-cling truck goes to the Cal-Waste recycling center anddrops everything they collect-ed into a big pile.

Next, a loader car brings allof the recyclable stuff that therecycling truck has dumped ina pile on the floor. Additional-ly, a machine carries all thestuff that the loader car put ina pile.

After that, employees ofCal-Waste sort out stuff thatwon’t be recycled like plasticbags. The employees mustwork while wearing gloves be-cause they might get stabbedin the hand with a needle withbad chemicals. If they do getstabbed by a needle, and theymight get sick and would not

be able to work. Also the peo-ple responsible for the sortinghave to be very careful be-cause if a plastic bag goesthrough the machine, the ma-chine will break.

All the recyclable stuff getssorted out to the next station.The employees and machinesseparate out plastic, paper andcardboard. The recyclables arethen packed into large blocks.

Most of the recyclable plas-tic at Cal-Waste is shipped toChina, where it will be recy-cled and turned into otherproducts.

What Reese and Heritage Elementary students learned at Cal-Waste

What happens to trash?By Shaila FloresHERITAGE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

What happens to the trash? Where does itgo?

When you drop some trash on the floor itgets recycled, or some of it gets recoveredand some of the trash gets burned. Thetrash gets associated in the trash landfills.

If you want to be in a good, clean place,you should help the community.

When you drop trash think of this: Allthe trash you throw on the floor gets pollut-ed, and sometimes the trash you throw goesto the water and fish think it’s food so theyeat it and they get sick and some fish die.Some people throw out plastic, papers, cans,water bottles and more.

If you love animals, you should not pol-lute, because if there is pollution fish die.

JAVIER SOTO AND GERMAN CAMARGO/HERITAGE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

MONICA ORTIZ/HERITAGE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

Recyclables are piled on the floor at Cal-Waste.