Koloa Kindergartener is Top EZ Island Pages Recycler

Koloa Kindergarten teacher Mrs. Naihe and top recycler Keenan Luis. Photo by Denise Tripoli

Three public elementary schools — Kapa`a Elementary, Wilcox Elementary and Koloa Elementary —  for a total of approximately 1,000 students, participated in the eighth offering of the annual EZ Island Pages Phone Book Recycling Progam.

The top recycler was Koloa Elementary School, winning $500 for recycling the most phone books of all participating schools. And topping the list at Koloa was energetic kindergartener Keenan Luis, who recycled a whopping 4,400 phone books, the most ever collected in the eight years of the program’s existence. He received an xBox 360 for his efforts.

EZ Island Pages treated Luis’ class to a pizza party, and in addition, the school  won $500 from EZ Island Pages.

Mrs. Naihe’s Kindergarten Class at Koloa School. Photo by Denise Tripoli

The program is a good thing, according to EZ Island Pages Kaua`i Sales Manager Denise Tripoli. She’s been with the company six years, when she took over the phone book recycling program.

Tripoli says the company brings recycling bins to the school to make the program more user friendly. She reports that for every 1 T (ton) of phone books recycled, the following resources are saved: 17 trees, 24,000 gal. of water, 3,700 lb. of lumber, 1,200 gal. of oil and 3,300 cu. yds. of landfill space.

In the past eight years of the program’s existence, Tripoli reports that Kaua`i school children have recycled over 135 T of phone books, saving the following estimated resources: 229,000 trees, 3.2 million gal. water, 500,ooo lb. of lumber, 162,000 gal. of oil and 445,000 cu. yds. of landfill space.

Also, in the past, EZ Island Pages planted shade trees at the Harry & Jeannette Weinberg Sports Fields at Lydgate Park in honor of the schools that participated in the phone book recycling program, but Tripoli says the program has chosen more recently to personally reward participating children. Each child that recycles at least 10 phone books is eligible for random prize drawings that include helicopter rides, Zip Line rides or an xBox 360.  Also, the three children who bring in the most books earn individual prizes including Nintendo, xBox 360 and Wii’s.