Batteries Not Included

Update: The battery blitz lives on

A note from St. Catharines, Ont.:

My Grade 5/6 class at Gracefield School ran a battery drive to collect and recycle dead batteries as an Earth Week Project. The school really pulled together and the class did a fabulous job in organizing the drive.

Thank-you for inspiring us,
Barb Morris, Grade 5/6 teacher

Here is a letter from one of Barb's students (edited for clarity and length):

Dear Marketplace,

Earth Week at Gracefield School was full of cleaning up, learning about our Earth and dead batteries. Lots of dead batteries. The reason? Well, our class (the grade 5/6 class) decided to run a dead battery drive, to see who could collect the most dead batteries. We thought of the idea after our teacher, Mrs. Morris showed us your CBC on-line video about dead batteries.

Our teacher asked us all to pitch in and every one did their part. There were readers, poster makers (not to mention people who coloured them), daily announcement writers and speakers, skit people, slideshow workers, and of course, the people who would go around every single day collecting and counting the batteries.

On the first day of our battery drive, tons of batteries poured in. The Grade 4/5's almost had 100 batteries on their first day!

Millions of North Americans don’t realize that dead rechargeable batteries contain heavy metals.

We would like to thank you for telling us about this problem so that we could help spread the word.

Sincerely,
Emma L., Grade 6

Posted on May 14, 2008
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