Mask Ninjas
Vision
Our goal is that disposable masks will be recycled instead of thrown into the waste stream.
Action
Students will have a box placed in a central location to recycle their disposable masks. Some classrooms will have their own buckets that will be picked up weekly. Garbage cans outside on the school playground will be checked weekly for masks as will surrounding streets as students go on walks. All members of the school community are welcome to bring their disposable masks for recycling. The intention is to bring awareness to the possibility of street waste going down storm drains and that all consumable products should be recycled instead of placed in the waste stream.
Reflection & Celebration
Our students really responded with enthusiasm to this project, volunteering to go check bins and shouting with excitement as they saw masks on the ground and racing to collect them. We ended up carrying two buckets, one just for masks and another for garbage as well. Tally marks were placed on a paper at the top of the bin and students negotiated who would get to put the masks in the bin vs. place a tally mark. They brought masks from home and cheered when we had our first tally count of 300. The school secretary remarked that it was too bad that we hadn’t started sooner, acknowledging the importance of the task we are doing.
A fun incident happened when we found a video about two performing artists in Japan who call themselves the Trash Ninjas. We decided to copy them and a few of their moves and called ourselves the Mask Ninjas.