BCGR - Project Redirectory

For the last couple of weeks Abilene students have been doing their part to help the environment by recycling old phone books. So, has a new phone book showed up on your doorstep? It's that time of year when not one, not two but several new telephone books collect in our homes. Before you decide to throw the old ones out or just don't want the new ones, send them with your kids to class!

Several schools in the Abilene ISD are taking part in "Project Redirectory," which allows schools to collect out-of-date and unwanted phone books to be recycled.  Chris Lana, a first grade teacher at Johnston Elementary told KRBC News "It's a wonderful program because it protects our environment and that's a great lesson to teach our kids. We're working very hard in helping our kids learn to be responsible citizens in this world and one of the ways to become a responsible citizen is certainly to take care of our resources."

The collection effort has been underway the last few weeks and also serves as a friendly a competition between the schools and classes. Those who collect the most have the choice of a pizza party or to plant a tree on the campus. Johnston elementary is one of the schools taking part in the program. On the day of our visit, the school had collected about 1800 phone books and anticipates to collect 5000 before the event ends.

"Our kids really get involved in this. This is one of the things the parents and grandparents get involved in and they really like supporting the kids in this endeavour so it's a really fun thing." Because of the easter holiday, the project re-directory collection period has been extended for the schools until Tuesday, April 14th so there is still plenty of time to bring those many phone books to be recycled The city's environmental recycling center is helping coordinate project re-directory and will collect the phone books from the schools.