Teaching students to care

Her elementary students dubbed her "the recycling fairy."

With her fairy costume — black garbage-bag skirt and shirt, mini-silverware earrings and a spatula wand — Marie Hartford makes recycling fun for students at Henry David Thoreau Elementary School in Kirkland. Hartford established a recycling program for bottles, cans and milk cartons and inspired students to start using — and washing — reusable lunch trays instead of plastic foam trays.

She and 17 others will be honored by King County Executive Ron Sims today in the fifth annual Earth Heroes at Schools ceremony at the Mercer View Community Center on Mercer Island.

The Earth Heroes program was established in 2001 to honor environmental work by teachers, students, staff members and volunteers at local schools. The goal is to recognize model efforts that can be adopted by other schools and organizations.

Hartford said she didn't want to force students to care about the environment; she wanted them to discover the importance on their own. So as part of a fifth-grade science project, she had them save their lunch trash and spread it on large tarps outside the school. They were amazed at the amount of trash, and specifically noticed how much of it was plastic foam, she said. She then provided information about plastic foam and the length of time it takes to break down into the Earth.

"Once the kids could see how much garbage [they generated] and know it wasn't a good thing, they were really upset," Hartford said.

The result: Students made a presentation to the Lake Washington School Board, got approval to switch to reusable trays, and committed to teaching younger students how to recycle their trash. Fifth-graders and vocational students volunteer to wash the trays each day.

The in-school effort is part of King County's Earth Legacy Initiative that recognizes programs, people and companies that work to improve the region's environment.

Among other Earth Heroes being recognized today:

• Darin Detwiler, math and forensic-science teacher at BEST High School in Kirkland, who organized a schoolwide program to integrate environmental curriculum into home-room classes after the school's environmental-science class was discontinued.

"I was not satisfied with the fact that students were going to be missing out," Detwiler said. "This is the next generation of consumers and voters, and if they don't understand the cause and effect of their actions now, when are they going to learn this?"

• Bellevue High School senior Lynn Spishak, who took over the school's Earthbound club as a sophomore and built the dwindling program into an active group of more than 20 members. As president for the past three years, Spishak has organized recycling drives for cellphones and used batteries, and started a "car-pool to school" day.

"We are trying to create an awareness of environmental issues at the school," Spishak said. "Maybe someone will notice what we are doing and think twice about what they are doing."

Kayla Webley: 206-464-2391 or kwebley@seattletimes.com