Bergvliet Primary School pupils not only wear green uniforms, they also aspire to be green and keep their carbon footprint low.
Earlier this year, after Bergvliet High School (BHS) principal Stephen Price an-nounced that the school’s recycling depot would be closing on Friday April 29 (“Bergvliet High recycling could be canned,” Bulletin, February 4), after 25 years, the primary school stepped in and decided to take on the running of this community service with help from the dedicated BHS team.
It made sense, says BPS principal Brandon Paulse, because the school was one of the first to take up the recycling crusade decades ago.
BPS runs inter-class competitions to see which one can collect the most glass or paper, and monitors take items from classrooms to the school’s depot for recycling.
Mr Paulse said Bergvliet High had always won the national glass recycling competition every year with the primary school coming second. The primary school is hoping to be a national winner this year, but it needs the community’s help. It needs volunteers to sort through the depot deliveries and clean goods (and clean goods only) for recycling.
Ingrid Godfrey, who manages the recycling depot, said many other recycling de-pots in the Constantia valley had closed because they were being used as dumps for garden refuse, pipes, window glass, rotten apples and other refuse.
Apart from the depot at the back of the school in Alphen Way, there are also conveniently placed igloos for glass and paper recyclables near the school’s front entrance in Children’s Way. The depot will be open on weekdays from 7am until 3pm and Saturdays from 7am to 1.30pm. It is closed on Wednesday and Sunday. BPS estate manager Eddie Kruger said there is also an after-hours recycling drop-off service behind the school in Alphen Way, but the school is looking at redesigning it because homeless people go through the bags and sometimes cause paper and other waste to get blown down the road.
Items the school won’t take include: polystyrene and styrofoam packaging, Fair Cape shiny number one milk bottles; brown cooldrink bottles; compact fluorescent lights or window pane glass.
Items the school will take include: bread tags and plastic bottle tops for wheelchairs; all types of glass bottles and glass jars including the jar lids without holes; all types of cans, aluminium and tin, and tin foil and aluminium trays; all paper including newspaper, advertising and magazines; common mix, which includes packaging such as boxes from cereals, toothpaste, teabags, the inner cardboard roll of toilet paper rolls, used gift wrapping, brown paper, paper bags, etc; corrugated cardboard boxes; plastic bottles with the following numbers on the base: 1, 2 and 5; soft plastic carrier bags and bread bags; tetrapaks for juice and long-life milk cartons, which must be washed out and flattened with the plastic tops removed; batteries and ink cartridges.
To volunteer, call Ms Godfrey at 072 073 3821.