News : Crayon Initiative: North Eden 4-H Club helps children\'s hospital patients

Rachel Rollinger and Ashlie Meyer pose with crayons collected at Shellsburg Elementary.

North Eden 4-H members prepare crayons for shipping.

What happens to crayons when people are done with them?

They usually get tossed into the garbage and clog our landfills with a waxy sludge. Every year approximately 500,000 pounds of broken crayons are thrown away. The North Eden Willing Worker’s 4-H Club decided to make their community service project for this year about recycling crayons. They are working with the Crayon Initiative organization out of California. They have been collecting used and broken crayons from Shellsburg Elementary and Tilford Elementary over the past few weeks. So far one classroom has turned in over 35 pounds of crayons. The crayons will then be shipped to the Crayon Initiative where the crayons are melted down and donated to Children’s Hospitals around the country. They are then donated to the pediatric wings or children’s hospitals to give to kids who spend most of their lives in the hospital and help provide an escape with art. It allows them to do something normal kids get to do and use their imagination to enjoy art.

“The response of crayons at the schools has been overwhelming! We had four large garbage bags full of crayons from Shellsburg alone. We have so many more crayons than we ever could have imagined.” said Tressa Walton, one of the leaders of N.E.W.W. A lot of people have donated crayons that are new or like new and several members from the club got together to sort the broken crayons from the good ones. “We are donating the crayons that still have life to give back to our community to the library, daycares, preschools, etc. If anyone knows of other places that could use the like-new crayons, we still have lots left to give away.” The Club is accepting crayon donations through May 27. There are drop boxes in all the classrooms at Tilford. The club is also accepting donations to help with the cost of shipping. Due to the overwhelming response, it is costing the club more than they anticipated. The Crayon Initiative is all donation based. “I am really proud of these 4-Her’s, they have jumped right into this project. We have several members that are faithfully weighing the crayon boxes (there is a competition between classes at the school), helping sort and package these crayons. Our hope is that they take these lessons with them into the future for protecting our environment, using old crayons instead of asking for new ones, and working together as a team.”

To find out more about the crayon initiative go to http://thecrayoninitiative.org/

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