Mineola Environmental Club Receives $1,000 Grant

’s Environmental Club was recently awarded a $1,000 first-place grant from the National Grid Foundation in partnership with the Alliance for Climate Education.

The club received the grant for a proposal they submitted to the Green Dependence Day Competition, in which they competed against 200 schools for the grand prize. One winner was chosen from each region, with Mineola taking top honors for the entire Northeast area.

Under the guidance of advisor Susan Kennedy, a biology teacher at the high school, the Environmental Club drafted a proposal that expanded their current Cap Recycling Program to the elementary level.

One of the pushes behind the expanded recycling program stemmed from a at the Nov. 17, 2011 meeting of the .

This is the fifth year the club has been implementing the program, which collects bottle caps through bins in the cafeteria and sends them to Aveda, who in turn uses the caps to make its shampoo bottles.

The club plans to use the grant to purchase and decorate recycling bins for each of the elementary schools, as well as to purchase items made out of recycled material to use as prizes and giveaways during presentations of the program to the younger students.