Editor’s note: Scarborough Middle School student Meghan Tyson wrote a story about a new recycling program she and other students have started there.

A new recycling program has just started in the Scarborough Middle School.

I am in the seventh grade. I noticed that the plastic milk bottles at our school were being thrown in the trash. I asked my mom to help me, and we have been working on a new program, with the help of many people, for more than months. It has taken a lot of time and effort, but it has finally payed off.

The recycling program was a big hit. I put up posters all over the school with the help of the Student Council. I also made announcements over the intercom and have asked my friends to make some this week, too, to inform people about what is happening.

Jeff Boyce, a science teacher at the high school, has told me all I need to know about recycling the milk bottles. He is the adviser to ECOS (Environmental Club of Scarborough) at the high school. The club recycles all kinds of stuff including batteries, paper and the milk bottles at the high school.

I have tried to do many different things in order to make this new program work well. I asked the Student Council to help me make more than 25 posters that we hung around the school. I made a PowerPoint presentation, with the help of Mrs. Walker, which will run during the SMS News on Thursday morning in all the classrooms. With my dad’s help, the Sea Dogs’ mascot, Slugger, is coming this week during the lunch periods. We are also having a competition on Friday to see which lunch can put the least amount of milk jugs into the trash can. I will be randomly drawing names from the winning wing and giving them prizes.

I conducted a bottle drive two weekends ago throughout all of the neighborhoods off Portland Farms Road to raise money for the prizes. I was not sure that we could raise enough money but I was very wrong. With the help of my friends and neighbors, I raised about $170 to go toward prizes.

There are over 800 kids in the middle school, and even if we recycle only part of the large number of milk bottles, we will save a lot of plastic from going into the incinerator and giving off gases that can cause cancer.

Right now, ECOS members and my mom will be bringing the bottles from the middle school up to the high school for the ECOS members to dump out the extra milk and then deliver them to ecomaine to recycle. I hope in the future that the middle school can start its own environment club, dump out the bottles at our own school, and maybe get ecomaine to pick up our bottles each week like they will be doing soon all across town.

Slugger pays a visit to Scarborough Middle School and seventh-grader Meghan Tyson last week to celebrate the start of a new recycling program.

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