Chippewa Secondary School students Ashley Chappelle,
16, left, Aaron Morin, 16, Nicole Krasowski, 16, and Ashley Wills,
16, sort and tally the number of batteries collected from one home
room, Thursday.
Little
did Alessandro Volta know that his greatest invention would end up
the trash.
And
more than 2,000 years after the Italian physicist created the first
electronic battery, area high school students are getting marks and
earning prizes for diverting spent household batteries from landfills.
Eight
high schools have signed up for the Fourth Annual Used Household
Battery Collection Competition to see who can gather the most dead
batteries by the time the contest closes May27.
"We're
gonna win," says a confident Josh Parker.
"We're
just going to make sure we collect a lot of batteries."
He's
among the Grade 10 students at Chippewa Secondary School responsible
for collecting the batteries weekly from fellow students and
teachers.
"It's
actually fun to go around to classes and see your friends, but you
can't really talk to them because you're doing a job,"says
student Amanda Demerse.
About
a dozen Chippewa students took time out from their studies this week
to share their strategies. They're assigning point values to the
weight of the batteries and how much damage they can do to the
environment - for example, a larger D battery gets higher points than
a AAA. Chippewa's student council is offering prizes.
The
Grade 10 students are part of Chippewa's school-to-work program
offering co-op placements.
"They're
tactile learners. They learn by doing," says math and science
teacher Chris Cassidy, a self proclaimed "left wing hippie"
who is spearheading the competition at Chippewa.
"They're
learning to work together, problem solving, calculating averages and
they'll be measuring volume," he says, explaining students will
use math if they have a reason.
And
they're already brainstorming where they'll get their batteries.
"I
know a couple of places. I want to go to the hospital because it
uses a lot of batteries," says Aaron Morin.
Chippewa
collected 449 kilograms of batteries last year, or about 0.50 kg per
student. It was narrowly edged out of the top three by Northern
Secondary School in Sturgeon Falls with 254 kg or 0.52 kg per student.
In
its first year taking part, Nbisiing Secondary School reached second
place with 49 kg or 0.8 kg per student, and St. Joseph-Scollard Hall
earned its second consecutive first-place finish with 1,083 kg or
1.06 kg per student.
Almaguin
Highlands diverted 293 kg of batteries from the landfill (0.39 kg
per student), Widdifield collected 195 kg (0.24 kg per student), West
Ferris had 177 kg (0.21 kg per student) and Algonquin had 91 kg (0.15
kg per student).
Nipissing
Enviromnental Watch, a local environmental protection group,
organizes the annual competition. It changed the rules last year to
choose a winner based on the amount of batteries collected per
student to make the competition more fair among larger and smaller
schools.
Nbisiing,
on Nipissing First Nation, doesn't just want to repeat its success,
says principal Muriel Sawyer.
"We're
out to win this year.
"People
have been coming in to drop offbatteries," Sawyer adds. "It
raises consciousness and awareness about how fragile our environment
can be and what small part we can do to protect Mother Earth."
Trevor
Schindeler, of Nipissing Environmental Watch, brainstormed the
competition and applied for funding from the TD Friends of the
Environment. Since 1992, it's grown from diverting a total of 1,200
kg of household batteries from landfills in 2002 to almost cracking
the three-ton mark with just under 6,000 pounds (or nearly 2,600 kg)
last year.
"I
was trying to think of something that could involve lots of people,
particularly high school students, but not be hard for anyone to take
part in. It just came to me that you're not supposed to put batteries
in the garbage," he says.
"I
think it's really become a year-round thing."
The
schools are accepting used rechargeable and nonrechargeable AA, AAA,
C, D, 6- and 9- volt household batteries and button batteries used in
watches and hearing aids.
Batteries
can contain acid, cadmium, mercury, copper, zinc, lead, manganese,
nickel, lithium and other materials dangerous to the environment
because the chemicals can leach into a leach into a landfill's soil
and reach surface water systems.
The
schools will not accept commercial or lead-acid car batteries.
