In observance of Earth Day today, students on the Big Island are competing to see who can help the environment more by collecting and recycling outdated phone books.
Three schools — Waiakea High School, Keaau Middle School and Chiefess Kapiolani Elementary School — are participating in an annual statewide contest to recycle outdated phone directories.
This is the 10th year of the annual contest, which is organized by marketing company Vivial, which publishes the Hawaiian Telcom Yellow Pages. Vivial awards each participating school with a small cash prize, with the school that recycles the most phone books in the state receiving a greater cash prize.
Janean Stone, student activities coordinator at Keaau Middle School, said the contest at Keaau and Kapiolani begins Monday and will continue until the end of May, shortly before the end of the school year. The contest at Waiakea High began earlier this year, starting at the end of March and ending Friday.
Donna Tanabe, student activities coordinator at Waiakea High, said the school has participated in the event since its beginning, collecting more than 6,000 phone books in its 2007 drive.
“It’s important to keep them out of our landfills,” Tanabe said. Vivial partners with recyclers on each island to process the books. On the Big Island, that partner is Hilo recycler Mr. K’s Recycling.
Despite Waiakea’s earlier successes, subsequent years have seen weaker showings. The school’s student body has decreased with time, and only 1,778 phone books were recovered last year, Tanabe said.
Nevertheless, Tanabe said students still are eager to collect books just for “the bragging rights.” Hundreds of books already have been collected so far, although Tanabe said an official tally would not be made until after the contest is over.
At the other two schools, however, the contest has only just begun.
Stone said this will be Keaau Middle School’s third year of participating, with the approximately 700 students collecting more than 400 books last year.
“We bought pizza for the top recyclers in each class last year,” Stone said.
Although the contest technically specifies that students should collect outdated phone books, Stone said the more books collected, regardless of date, the better.
“If you’re not going to use it, you may as well recycle it now than later,” Stone said.
Stone said the contest not only is environmentally friendly, but helps students consider their own impacts on the environment.
“One of the main reasons to do this is to encourage kids to think beyond their own community,” Stone said.
Of course, Stone said, it’s also an opportunity for friends and families of students to rid themselves of old, unused phone books gathering dust at home.
“They just kind of become part of the landscape at home,” Stone said.
To keep the books from becoming part of the landscape outside, phone books can be collected at any of the three participating schools, or at Mr. K’s Recycling in Hilo.
Email Michael Brestovansky at mbrestovansky@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
