By Zoe Blickenderfer, President of Somerville High School’s Green Club, Somerville, MA

At the beginning of every year, at our first few Green Club meetings we always come up with lots of good ideas for projects and goals, but it is always helpful to go to the ACE leadership trainings because connecting with other clubs and teams is a great way to learn about new project ideas and get advice on how to make your projects a success!

At the last leadership training our members went to, there was one project in particular that another club shared that we found interesting and had never thought of before: a sneaker and electronic drive!

This is how it works:

Every day, for a set period of time (say, a month), let the school know through morning/afternoon announcements or a bulletin that you are collecting used electronics and sneakers and have them deliver them to a certain room or teacher. It’s as easy as that! After all of the goods have been collected there are a few ways to proceed.

We decided to give our sneakers to Nike® to be recycled, but have not yet decided which organization to give our electronics to. We have narrowed it down to Cell Phones for Soldiers and an organization that gives cell phones to battered women, Cell Phones for Life. These are certainly not the only options for there are other organizations that do similar things. (This can also be an easy fundraiser; there are some places that will take your electronics for money!)

This project is awesome for many reasons:

1) Unfortunately, teenagers these days seem to go through sneakers, cell phones, and mP3 players like nobody’s business! This means that there is always an excess of things just waiting to be collected.

2) Also, many people do not donate or recycle their sneakers and electronics; they just throw them away! That leads to the second great thing about this project: saving these guys from the landfill.

3) Finally, this project is an easy way to involve your whole school. Often times at Green Club we have a hard time getting our whole school as excited as we are, or at least as participatory. However, we found tons of people who were willing to donate things and pitch in.

This project was super successful and we were able to get it done in only a month!

The Somerville High School Green Club collected 30 pairs of sneakers and over 40 phones in their first week of collecting the items! How do we know? The team’s ACE Ambassador shared their success with us online at www.acespace.org/done!

Share what your Action Team has accomplished!