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SLADE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL EARTHSAVERS CLUB LOGO Featured on the sides of the City of Laramie Recycling Truck ---PAGE BREAK--- Slade EarthSavers club re-uses, reduces, recycles BY CHILTON TIPPIN / [EMAIL REDACTED] • FRIDAY, MARCH 08, 2013 A group of elementary students dressed as chickens and worms climbed into trash cans Wednesday to teach kindergartners the importance of recycling. The EarthSavers club at Slade Elementary performed the skit to show their peers the proper way to dispose food scraps. Fourth-grader Kolton Brenneman, the skit’s chicken, said he wanted to teach kindergartners how the composting program worked. “I was teaching them that they could put any leftovers in the EarthSavers bucket so that they could take that stuff to the chicken and the worms,” he said. “The main worm (another character) was telling them that they were going to turn the food scraps into compost, and I told them that us chickens eat the food scraps.” Carol Pooler, Slade’s EarthSaver club sponsor, said the school’s food scraps were taken to local farms. “My students came up with the idea to do the skit,” she said. “You could see how the kindergartners were just elated to have Oscar the Grouch and a chicken in the classroom teaching them. And that’s something that they’ll remember. “They saw it, they heard it, they did it and now they’ll be able to do it in the cafeteria.” EarthSavers club started in October with the goal of teaching students about recycling, re-using and reducing. About 30 students are in the club. They create compost out of the school’s scraps, recycle, listen to speakers from the city’s landfills and waste-management facilities and make treasures out of trash, among other activities. Pooler said the club teaches students how to be good stewards of the planet. “It’s a way of life, and it’s going to have to become a way of life,” she said. “If we can teach those kindergartners here at school as part of their lifestyle they can take it home and be able to teach their parents how to do it.” Slade fourth-grader Cayson McLean dressed as a worm for the skit. “I told the kids, just like you do at home, we recycle here at school, too,” he said. Pooler said the club will soon branch into recycling solid items like cardboard and plastic. The club members plan to spread the recycling program throughout the school. In addition, EarthSavers students designed a logo which will soon be attached to the city’s recycling trucks, Puller said. “Perhaps we can start with this generation of young kids and create a world of recyclers and re-users,” she said. ---PAGE BREAK--- Calvin Webb, playing the role of Oscar the Grouch, and Kolton Brenneman, playing the role of a chicken, act out their parts for the EarthSavers club’s skit presented to the three kindergarten classes at Slade Elementary Thursday, teaching the importance of separating leftover food scraps when recycling. JEREMY MARTIN/Boomerang photographer ---PAGE BREAK--- Slade Earthsavers Club Re-use tin cans to make a tin man scare crow for the school garden.