Local Teen Brings Crayola ColorCycle Project To Smithtown

SMITHTOWN, NY - Smithtown has gotten just a little bit "greener" thanks to one local student.

Recently, 17-year-old Justin McArdle, a soon-to-be a senior at Smithtown High School East started a recycling project involving several schools in the district.

While scrolling through Facebook searching for recycling project one day, the teen noticed a post praising the Crayola ColorCycle initiative, which is a project that involves sending used markers to facility where they convert them into fuel to be used to power homes and cars.

According to the ColorCycle website, 1 box of markers can create enough fuel to cook a whole breakfast.

After seeing that, McArdle knew he wanted to get involved.

"I've always been an environmental activist for all different issues, but knowing that the United States generates so much trash per year, over 200 million tons, I definitely felt like this was something I can do in my community to help tackle this issue," he said.

Around the end of the school year when he knew all the schools will be cleaning out their supplies, McArdle reached out to all the principals in the Smithtown school district to ask them to participate in the program.

He was expecting maybe one or two replies but ended up implementing the program into 4 elementary schools and 1 middle schools including: Accompsett Elementary, Mount Pleasant Elementary, Dogwood Elementary, Mills Pond Elementary and Great Hollow Middle schools.

"The principals were glad I got in touch with them and happy to implement the program," McArdle said.

As a result, he collected a total of 60 pounds of markers.

"I have hopes that next year I can expand this project to all of the schools in my school district by also to neighboring school districts like Sachem and Ward Melville," he said "I think next year we can definitely collect over 100 pounds."

When he started the project, his main goal was to just get any markers he could.

"I made sure the boxes I provided weren't too big because I didn't want it too look sad if they didn't have any markers in them but I was probably looking for about 10 pounds," McArdle said. "In terms of results it really blew me away I collected over 10 pounds for each school they had to provide additional boxes than the ones I provided because there were so many."

Thanks to the success of this project, the teen plans to start it up again in September but will also be searching for more projects to help the environment.

"I think people should realize each day each person in the United States sends over 4.5 pounds to the landfill and only 25 percent of solid trash is ever recycle and I think one marker at a time, we can decrease our landfills and save the environment," he said.

His mother, Lisa McArdle said she was very proud that he took this initiative to help the environment.

"We didn't realize how many markers we were able collect and I think it was just a wonderful thing," she said "It was a community thing and he just got such a wonderful response."