America Recyles Day had eager participants at both David Lipscomb Elementary School and Lipscomb University today.
E-waste — from cellphones to computers to batteries — and many other items were collected from 9 a.m to 2 p.m. Tuesday at David Lipscomb Elementary School.
Student pharmacists from the Lipscomb University College of Pharmacy collected unused and out-of-date medications.
It’s part of the lesson plan at David Lipscomb Elementary School, where third graders are studying the negative effects of medications that get into landfills and the water supply.
The students capped off their study by coordinating a household and e-waste collection today.
Throwing away trash has grown more complicated as awareness has been raised on the damaging effects of mercury, lead and arsenic on the environment. Throwing out household trash – including light bulbs, batteries or old electronics — has become much more complicated with various items needing to be disposed of in various locations around town.
And now with more than 100 different pharmaceuticals having been detected in lakes, rivers, reservoirs and streams throughout the world, disposal of expired and leftover drugs has become an important issue.
Pharmacists recommend that many drugs be returned at only designated “take-back” locations, but they are not often easy to find.
“For years, pharmacists have instructed patients to flush leftover medications down the toilet, but now that practice is having ill effects on the nation’s water table,” said Ginger Reasonover, the science laboratory coordinator at the elementary school.
In March 2008 the Associated Press found that 24 major metropolitan areas had trace amounts of drugs in their water supplies, meaning at least 41 million Americans had tiny levels of drugs in their drinking water.
Cell phones collected Tuesday will be donated to Cell Phones for Soldiers. Proceeds from recycling newspapers will benefit David Lipscomb Elementary School environmental education. The aluminum cans will benefit the elementary school’s Monarch Project, which helps provide a living wage for poor workers in Mexico. The plastic bottles recycled will be collected by Dream Machine Recycle Rally, an organization which supports the Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for U.S. Veterans with Disabilities, offering a free education in entrepreneurship and small business management to post-9/11 veterans.
In its third annual household and hazardous waste collection Nov. 12, the David Lipscomb Elementary School students collected more than 10,000 pounds of electronic waste, 1 ton of newspaper and 6,000 pharmaceutical pills, over 130 carloads of waste, about 3,500 batteries, 34 cell phones, 64 fluorescent bulbs and 102 aluminum cans.