Girl Scout Junior Troop #4036, a tight-knit group of girls in Southlake, made a pact the first day of school in August 2012 to earn the Bronze Award. The GS Bronze Award is the junior level's highest honor awarded to a troop or individual that recognizes a need and acts to make a positive change within their community.
The girls spent the first couple of weeks identifying and isolating needs and issues in our community that could use improvement. Several girls recognized a need for recycling at Dragon Stadium, so the girls created a plan to initiate recycling at the stadium. Throughout the year they researched recycling, visited a landfill, spoke with a representative from Republic Recycling to learn more about the subject. Next, they worked hard on educational materials and wrote articles about recycling and reviewed why recycling is so important to our community. Finally, the girls attended a CISD board meeting requesting approval to begin a program. The board embraced the concept and encouraged the girls to meet with key personnel within the district. Soon, the girls were placed in contact with David Allison, the district recycling coordinator, and he helped to secure a recycling dumpster at the stadium and purchased 40 corrugated recycling containers for the games.
The troop rolled out the program June 7, 2013 when graduation was held at Dragon Stadium. This was the perfect event for the girls to kick off their program since the event was relatively short, there was a small crowd, and the only products sold were water bottles provided by the Carroll High School's PTO. The girls put together the bins and placed them next to each trash can in the stadium, then they manned each bin and encouraged guests to recycle their water bottles.
Following the event, the girls spent over two hours emptying, collecting and bagging the leftover water bottles in the stadium seating. This was an exhausting task, but highly rewarding when they stepped back and looked at over 40 large trash bags filled with almost 3,000 water bottles. The girls walked away from the project with the knowledge that they prevented thousands of plastics products from reaching our local landfill. They intend on earning their Silver Award by continuing the recycling program this fall at all Dragon home games.
The stadium can hold 12,000 fans and it is believed that nearly every guest will purchase at least one drink served in a plastic container. By manning and educating fans at each and every recycling bin throughout the stadium at ALL 5 home games, the girls anticipate they can prevent well over 50,000 plastic containers from gaining space in our landfills. Now that is a service project worth bragging about!