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North Hempstead Partners With Cosmetic Giant, Participating Town School Districts to Launch Innovative Program to Recycle Plastic Bottle Caps

 

For Immediate Release                                                                                                    Media Contacts: Collin Nash and Sid Nathan
Nov. 15, 2010                                                                                                                                                                      (516) 869-7794

North Hempstead Partners With Cosmetic Giant, Participating Town School Districts to Launch Innovative Program to Recycle Plastic Bottle Caps

North Hempstead, NY—The Town of North Hempstead last week earned the distinction as the first municipality in the State to collaborate with the private sector on a plastic bottle cap recycling initiative when Supervisor Jon Kaiman and the Town Board joined with representatives from Estee Lauder to launch the innovative program

Dubbed “Caps Back” For Recycling, the unique re-use program will be jointly conducted by the cosmetic giant’s Aveda division which developed a process to recycle old caps into new ones for use on its line of lotions and shampoos.

The bottle caps will be collected by students in nine of the Town’s eleven school districts now participating in the award winning School Recycling Partnership Program. The Town has provided all nine districts with clear plastic receptacles and has committed to collecting the contents.

“I’m proud to partner with all these schools and this forward-thinking company to help make this world a little cleaner,” supervisor Kaiman said at the late-morning Town Hall press briefing. “We want to teach our young people to recycle because we know they will become lifelong stewards of the environment and as such teach their children and their children’s children.”

With more than 30,000 students in nine of the Town’s 11 school districts participating in the School Recycling Partnership program—winner of the 2009 New York State Environmental Excellence Award—since it was launched almost four years ago, an estimated 800 tons of paper, 175 tons of comingles and about 40 tons of electronic waste has been collected.

“This is a great day in the Town of North Hempstead,” John Delfausse, Estee Lauder’s Chief Environmental Officer and Vice President of Global Package Development told the gathering of town officials, school superintendents and environmental advocates. “It’s groundbreaking what you are doing. I can’t tell you how important this is getting the kids involved.”

Launched in April of 2009, a second component of the School Recycling Partnership Program—there are seven all told including a recycling video and art competition, composting and electronic waste collection—the “Weighing In” program was adopted by all nine participating schools.

Under “Weighing In” the schools are supplied with an industrial scale, allowing the students to track the amount of paper recycled using a monthly chart. Students then log in the data each time they do the recycling collection. At the end of the month, students announce the amount of paper that was recycled and the environmental benefit derived from their recycling efforts.

Aveda is the first company in the nation to reuse plastic bottle caps. And North Hempstead’s partnership with Aveda makes it the first New York State municipality to recycle bottle caps.

“We take our caps off to the Town of North Hempstead,” said Maureen Dolan Murphy, Executive Program Manager for Citizens Campaign for the Environment. “There is no better teacher than hands on involvement when it comes to grooming young people to become environmentally conscious. This is a very exciting program.”

Supervisor Jon Kaiman thanked all the participating school districts for their continued partnership in helping to protect North Hempstead’s environment. The participating school districts are Carle Place, East Williston, Great Neck, Herricks, Manhasset, New Hyde Park, Port Washington, Sewanhaka, and Westbury.


Students around North Hempstead are eager to participate in the newest addition to the School Recycling Partnership Program - “Caps Back” For Recycling.

Supervisor Jon Kaiman and Councilwoman Maria-Christina Poons speak to students at Great Neck North Middle School on the importance of recycling.

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