For the fifth year in a row, Saint Joseph School won the Operation Greenlid recycling contest, thanks to schoolwide participation and a dedicated team of a dozen families willing to transport large amounts of plastic, paper, cardboard, steel and aluminum. 

The staff at St. Joseph Parish and community members also contributed materials to the effort, which led the private Catholic school to win $500 for bringing the most items out of the three participating schools to the Grapevine Road recycling center from late August through early May. 

Mark Barney, chairman of the Berkeley County Solid Waste Authority board and principal of Martinsburg South Middle School, announced the awards at the May 7 meeting of the Berkeley County Commission. Coming in second place was South Middle, which won $300. Third place – and $200 – went to Blue Ridge Community and Technical College, which was new to the contest this year. 

Operation Greenlid was established in 2015 by the solid waste authority and Apple Valley Waste to encourage student participation in solid waste management, roadside litter reduction and alternatives to landfilling. Apple Valley Waste provides 96-gallon recycling totes to the schools, which must transport what they gather to the Grapevine Road site for counting. 

Althea Bayer, office administrator for the solid waste authority, said a total of 662 totes were  filled by the schools over the course of the contest. 

Because of its high volume of recyclables, Saint Joseph School gathered most of its commingled items in bags and boxes. About 15 students in grades six through eight – usually five or six per week – collected the items once a week in the main and middle/high school buildings on the school’s campus. Staff from the two prekindergarten buildings rolled their items in a tote to the main building. Students placed everything in the school’s recycling area in the back parking lot. From there, members of a dozen students’ families who signed up for weekly collection loaded their vehicles and transported all of the items for counting, then unloaded them in the single-stream collection area.

Steve Catlett, vice president of the commission, commended the students and other school representatives present for taking steps to care for the Earth. He thanked Barney for keeping the program going.

“You teach them young and they’ll remember it as they get older,” Catlett said about recycling. “It will pay dividends down the road, for sure.”