Who knew that restaurant crayons were a problem?
Well, a group of youngsters is making sure that it doesn't.
The “Mini RefrigeRAIDERS” represents Chippewa Secondary School in the First Lego League of Canada. The brand new team is reaching out to local restaurants to assist in the 2015 Trash Trek project.
“We want to work with restaurants in North Bay to help keep crayon waste out of our local landfill,” says Noah Lefebvre, age 10.
The rookie team is excited to compete in their very first Lego Robotics competition in North Bay at the end of November. As part of the competition, students are asked to complete a “TRASH TREK” project, Robot challenge and demonstrate the CORE Values of the FIRST Lego League program.
Teagan Kingston, age 10 says “As a team we noticed that many restaurants in our city give crayons to kids but most end up in the trash. We want to make this better”.
The team members have learned a lot about North Bay’s trash over the last month. They have gone on a tour of the Recycling Plant, Hazardous Waste Depot and the Merrick Landfill.
“Our team is interested in STEM Learning (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math). The students on our team are young, intelligent and are active participants in our local community. Our students want to work with local restaurant to improve upon crayon waste. The team must identify a problem, explain a solution and share their findings. We think that their small and simple project can make an immediate and meaningful difference in our community.” Andrea Lefebvre (Teacher and Lego Robotics team coach)
The team in their first year, hope local restaurants will support them with their project by asking their staff to save all the used crayons for collection. The team of boys have created “Crayon Collection” blue bins to help with the storage and collection during the month of October.
The boys will predict how much crayon waste in pounds local restaurants can collect over a one-month period. They plan to use the material to create new products so the crayons will have more then one use before ending up as trash at the already full landfill.
The “Mini RefrigeRAIDERS” will weigh crayons after collection, divide by colour, take the wrappers off each crayon and will melt them down. After the wax is melted they will pour the wax into special LEGO molds that the team has ordered, to create new and improved LEGO crayons!
The students have decided to donate the special recycled, reused crayons to local charities and special groups that would benefit from our recycled crayons.
If your restaurant is interested in participating in the CRAYON COLLECTION, please contact Andrea Lefebvre at [email protected] or 705-840-0875. The team will also be contacting restaurants this week to make arrangements.
For more information about the First Lego League, visit http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/fll
