Foam tray review continues

Rawlins Daily Times, Jerrett Raffety

Rawlins Middle School head custodian Balentin Pacheco emptied a trash can full of Styrofoam lunch trays in the school's cafeteria on Wednesday. Some students want the foam trays banned fro the school.

By Janice Kurbjun
Times staff writer

Limited options and budget restraints have faced school officials as they’ve tried to eliminate plastic foam trays from the Rawlins Middle School kitchen inventory.

School Board member Dave Dingman plans Thursday to meet with the sixth graders who requested the elimination of the trays. He wants to talk about options with the students.
“There’s not a lot that you can do with Styrofoam right now,” Dingman said. Still, he has found some possibilities.

Dingman’s favorite idea is to purchase biodegradable trays made of corn and sucrose that decompose fairly rapidly. At 10 to 15 cents a pop, the trays are expensive, but address all the concerns of the students, including safety when carrying hot food. And the trays have environmental benefits. By contrast, plastic foam trays cost between 1 and 5 cents each.

Two other options exist, Dingman said. One involves gathering the trays after use and applying a chemical substance — acetone — to shrink them into a glue-like resin. The chemical is typically used on foam packing peanuts, so Dingman is not sure if it would effectively interact with food remnants on the lunch trays.

Another option is to install a dishwasher in the school’s kitchen and purchase permanent trays that would be reused.

Politics part of curriculum

• Teachers throughout Carbon County find ways to incorporate real politics into the classroom.

By Janice Kurbjun
Times staff writer

The presidential game of tug of war won’t last forever, and it seems young voters have the pull to decide whether the ribbon falls to the right or the left in 2008.

According to a post-Super Tuesday Rock the Vote poll, the energy of young voters is at an unprecedented level.

Requiring a senior government course is one step Carbon County schools have taken in an attempt to mobilize teens. From there, teachers can embellish the curriculum as they see fit.
“There’s so much outside the book, so why stick with a simulation when so much else is at your fingertips?” asked Doug Tieszen, Encampment’s government teacher.

Tieszen starts locally by asking each student to track three to five bills before the Wyoming Legislature that are of interest to the student, such as changes to driver’s license regulations or the Hathaway Scholarships.

“They see laws being made that directly affect them,” Tieszen said. “That’s when they realize they’re adults.”

Tieszen stands among a crowd of county teachers who incorporate a media unit where students explore bias, points of view and vested interests of various media outlets. He believes understanding the media and being exposed to the gamut of outlets is important in making educated decisions.

Last week, Tieszen’s class discovered that the BBC has a different definition than NBC of world news. “(The students) counted 16 different countries in the BBC report versus a brief about Iraq (on NBC),” he said.

Amy Hazelwood, Rawlins High School’s American history teacher, encourages conversation about satire. Students watch, but do not always understand, television programs like the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Little Bush and South Park, so they ask their teacher about the jokes.
“Satire gets them interested,” she said.

Most government teachers in Carbon County encourage students to register to vote and most have the county clerk visit their classrooms. Saratoga’s Ginger Miller even takes a class field trip to the voting booths to cast ballots while non-voters watch. Her students also participate yearly in a national mock election, where the voting process is simulated in entire schools.


Teachers notice changes

In 2001, an MTV survey of young adults found that about half thought that rather than vote, they could make more of a difference by getting involved with the community.

By contrast, a 2008 Rock the Vote survey showed that 89 percent of the people polled believed they have the power to change the country through the ballot box.

However, after 20 years of teaching, Encampment’s Doug Tieszen doesn’t think much has changed in terms of young voters being excited about the elections.

“All students are pretty apathetic and have been,” he said, “but I am encouraged by the reports of new voter registrations throughout the country.”

Saratoga teacher Ginger Miller believes the apathy “is mixed. I’ve found that if their parents voted, they are more likely to vote.” Parental influence is listed as one of the top reasons for a lack of student votes.

Meanwhile, Amy Hazelwood at Rawlins High School said that “this year is the most interest I’ve seen (in the elections). It was interesting to see the heartbreak when candidates dropped out.”

Recycling bags is smart for business

My first business story!

Rawlins Daily Times, Jerrett Raffety

Plastic bags may be recycled at City Market in Rawlins. The bags are shipped to Denver and eventually to Idaho where they're used to manufacture new plastic shopping bags.


By Janice Kurbjun
Times staff writer

Plastic bags collected by City Market in Rawlins see much of the west before they find their way back into grocery stores.

Once most people drop the bags off at the store, they are out of sight and out of mind. But what happens from there?

According to Pat Greaser, director of retail operations at King Sooper’s Denver headquarters, the bags come in from various stores, including Rawlins, and get compacted into a tight brick. Each brick is put on a pallet and sits in the warehouse until there are enough pallets to fill a semi.

Since the debut of the bag recycling program in the fall of 2007, two trucks have been filled in Denver and a third is nearly full. So far, 6.6 million bags have been gathered in Denver for recycling.

The trucks travel to Idaho, directly to the bag manufacturer, to melt the bags into reusable pellets. Mixing the recycled pellets with new plastic pellets at a ratio of about 80 new to 20 old, new bags are made.

“(The bags) have to meet the specifications for rigidity,” Greaser said. “That’s why the mix so highly favors the new plastic.”

The recycling program was set up by the stores’ bag manufacturer, to ensure that 100 percent of the bags get reused and are not lost in a landfill. “We are in control from start to finish,” Greaser said. That way, the ad on the bag boasting recycled material is sure to be true.

The Rawlins store empties its bag barrel once a day, according to store Manager Otto Novota. The plastic gets stuffed into large, black garbage bags and loaded daily into a semi-trailer destined for Denver. Accompanying the bags are 12,000-pound bales of crushed cardboard, also meant for recycling.

To discourage the wasteful use of a resource, the grocery store chain pays customers five cents per bag if they bring their own, a cost that far exceeds the price of simply manufacturing more bags. It’s costly, but Greaser said it’s the right thing to do.

According to Novota, “more often, people bring (the bags) in and reuse them because we offer a nickel for each. It’s better than having them blow around in the wind.” He sees people reusing the plastic bags or bringing their own canvas ones.