The Eco Exeter team at South Huron District Secondary School has taken recycling to another level.
Teacher Amanda Keller started Eco Exeter about two years ago to get her Grade 9 class, and ultimately the community, involved in recycling and cleaning up the environment around them. And this year, her Grade 9 students purchased some personal protective equipment recovery initiative containers from Green Circle Salons, a Toronto Waste Recovery company.
"So with these containers, we can put in our masks, our disposable gowns, disposable face shields. And at first, we bought four for our school because we were noticing the huge increase in the amount of disposable masks, because our staff are required to wear medical-grade masks."
But then the students decided they should distribute some containers around town and so now they have four at the high school and another six strategically placed around the town.
Keller said Green Circle Salon picks up the containers when they're full.
"So first they will spin the weave to get rid of any excess water, incinerate it, make sure that there's filters in place to collect anything that would be going into the atmosphere and then the ash is sifted through and they're removing any of the metal pieces, for example, the nose piece from the mask and then they'll recycle that metal."
The remaining ash is used in the construction industry for asphalt and bricks.
More about the recycling program can be found on the Eco Exeter website and on the Green Circle Salon website.