Job Corps students teach green message

PALMER — A little bit of awareness goes a long way.

Ann Rustad found that out last year when she decided to start recycling as much as she could of the waste in her Construction Academics class at the Alaska Job Corps center in Palmer.

She said her class used to produce two kitchen-size trash cans of waste each day. Since they started thinking about that waste, however, Rustad said it takes four days to fill up just one can.

Spreading that type of thinking is what led her to put together a green technology and sustainability fair at the Job Corps center Tuesday.

“We are trying to bring awareness to the students on cutting back and recycling,” she said, as students bowled for empty soda bottles and tried, but failed, to pull apart two phone books held together simply by folding their pages one atop the other.

Looking over at one wall of the gymnasium, she said a stack of gallon jugs as tall and long as a good-sized car was the equivalent of what one person uses in a day in America.

“Some of these booths have more meaning to our students because a lot of them don’t have running water in the villages,” she said.

In the middle of the gym, student Ana Belisle sat next to a paper tree with a PVC-pipe trunk. She said her project looked at how many trees can be saved through recycling. In her research, Belisle said, she learned that recycling is actually in decline right now. She also learned that a 35-foot tree is needed to make a 6-foot stack of newspapers.

Over by the milk jugs, instructor Vinny Suozzo, who teaches students to be electricians, said his program has also caught the recycling bug. The way the program works, the wire used in the unit during which students wire up a full-sized house is pulled out, cut up and used in a second project to wire a model house. Then the wire is cut up even more and used to wire up a simple circuit.

He said once it’s cut into pieces so small they can’t be used, his students strip the wire, sell it for scrap and buy new wire. It saves the school money at the same time it reduces waste.

Suozzo hopes sometime in the next year or two he’ll be able to put up a wind generator at the school. His students already helped put one up at a local resident’s house. Having the windmill would provide useful learning opportunities as students monitored how much electricity it generated. The windmill wouldn’t put a big dent in the school’s utility bill, he said, but having it there could spur more investment in green technology at the Palmer center but also, Suozzo thinks, at other centers around the country.

He said he’s worked to get his students more aware of energy consumption, particularly when it comes to power usage most people might not even be aware they’re engaging.

“If you go into any of the dorm rooms, if there are four students there are at least four cell-phone chargers,” he said.

Even if there’s no phone attached, he said, those chargers usually still draw power. Simply unplugging those, and unplugging televisions and Xboxes when they’re not in use, he said, can cut down on energy use.

Rustad said she felt the green fair was a success, showing students both the problems they face and offering them some novel solutions. She also felt it was important that students did most of the presentations.

“They learn more if they hear it from their peers,” she said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.