Re: more on Teens and Recycling

Myra Nissen (myracycl@inreach.com)
Tue, 26 Jan 1999 10:14:34 -0800


When I was working for the City of Fremont I conceived and wrote a grant
to fund education for high school students in auto shop. The product was
finally completed after I left (without my name being mentioned,
**sniff**), "Oil's Well That Ends Well, A Curriculum for High School
Teachers on Oil Awareness and Recycling Education."

Management Board, I felt that kids in auto shop were at high risk for
mis-disposing of used oil. I felt these kids were not a good target for
the traditional school assemblies that are popular methods of outreach
about
proper disposal of used oil. (I remembered that in high school, these
were the kids who ditched assemblies.)

After speaking with the auto shop teachers, I found I was correct. The
teachers told me that the kids hung out in the auto shop during
assemblies. They even ate lunch there! They had no information about
used oil recycling, they did not have the equipment -- one teacher even
told me that he made pans in the metal shop for kids to use to drain oil
into. Some theachers only had their classes go through the motions of
changing oil and did not
actually change oil because they did not know how to dispose of the oil,
even though the school district has their own fleet of vehicles!

I hired a consultant to create the corriculum, develop an
infrastructure where by the auto shops could collect and recycle oil and
other fluids, and developed a list of equipment needed by the auto
shops. I think it was succesful, and I believe that state is using it as
an example of successful utlization of the used oil grant funds.

Myra