12th Annual School Recycling Challenge Focuses on Non-traditional Recycling and Community Stewardship
Keep Golden Isles Beautiful’s Lahra Meusel and Lea King-Badyna display the accepted School Recycling Challenge accepted items. (provided photo)
Celebrating over a decade of youth engagement, Keep Golden Isles Beautiful’s 12th annual School Recycling Challenge again focuses on landfill waste reduction and invites the public to support local schools in this community betterment project.
“The 2026 Challenge coincides with the national America Recycles Day on November 15 and focuses on three item streams not accepted in our local recycling programs: oral care products, cereal bags and pens/highlighters/markers,” said Keep Golden Isles Beautiful executive director Lea King-Badyna. “By recycling these used items that are normally tossed in the trash, we are able to immediately reduce landfill waste.”
Partners in Education, PTAs, businesses and members of the public are invited to take part in the Challenge as well by collecting used oral care products, pens/highlighters/markers and cereal bags for participating local public, private schools and institutions of higher education. Simply contact Keep Golden Isles Beautiful to verify a school’s Challenge participation and arrange to drop collected items by the KGIB offices November 2-16. Collected items should be separated by category and labeled with the intended school name.
The collected items will be recycled via TerraCycle, an organization focusing on non-traditional recycling and eliminating the idea of waste.
“Again this year the public will drop off collections to the KGIB offices instead of individual schools,” said King-Badyna. “We are excited to continue a decade plus of the Challenge and encourage schools and teachers to participate in this community stewardship activity. Our hope is that schools will continue recycling non-traditional items through TerraCycle via our office even after this year’s Challenge is over.”
The School Recycling Challenge is sponsored by the Georgia Sea Grill Collective. For Challenge information, to verify school participation or to register for the 2026 School Recycling Challenge, contact Keep Golden Isles Beautiful at info.kbgib@gmail.com or 912/279.1490.
