HOPE club looks to help the planet

This school year, Glenwood Middle School started a new club for students, HOPE. HOPE (Helping Our Planet Earth) club focuses on helping make the Earth a better place to live.

In its first year, the HOPE club focused on projects aimed at reducing the amount of waste sent to landfills while also earning money with that waste for the school and future HOPE projects. They participated in the Green Team’s Cash for Cans contest and collected 393 pounds of cans, earning the school more than $212.

Another project HOPE focused on was the collecting of specific waste items that earned the school points through a waste collection site called Terra Cycle. Some of the items collected include Capri Sun pouches, foil bar wrappers, empty tape rolls and Little Bites wrappers. Each single item is worth a point and these points are used to earn money for the school or be redeemed for actions or products from Terra Cycle. The school earned nearly 11,000 points to date and the HOPE club voted to use these points to preserve land through the National Wildlife Federation totaling more than four acres. They also collected more than 5,000 plastic bottles to recycle.

Fifth-grader and club member, Jenna Madick, was recognized for her efforts in a contest sponsored by the Green Team. Madick was applauded at the Mahoning County courthouse at the County Commissioners meeting for being the fifth-grade winner of the Green Team’s placemat contest. The students created a design emphasizing reduce, reuse, recycle. Madick’s design was selected as the fifth-grade winner in Mahoning County and she won a $25 prize from Dominion. Her design will also appear in local participating restaurants on placemats. Another outstanding member, eighth-grade student, Sophia McGee, recently started a community garden at the Southern Stables.