La Vega Elementary joins nationwide recycling contest
School participates in Million Cans Recycling Contest for third consecutive year
Bellmead, Texas (KWTX) - La Vega Elementary has joined the Can Manufacturers Institute(CMI) and Recycling Society’s Million Cans Recycling Contest, which launched in early October.
The contest involves 54 schools across America in collecting empty aluminum beverage cans. The competition runs through April 30, 2026, and aims to promote environmental awareness, hands-on learning, teamwork and community engagement.
There is a bin located on the La Vega Elementary campus located at 3100 Wheeler Street Bellmead, Texas where residents can drop off cans to help the students in this years contest.
This marks La Vega Elementary’s third year participating in the Million Cans Recycling Contest. In La Vega’s first year of the recycling contest in 2023-2024 the 3rd graders finished in 5th place among 8 schools with 429,380 collected and in the 2nd year students collected 32,655 cans and finished in 14th place out of 18 schools.
“This nationwide contest pairs elementary schools with our U.S. can manufacturer and supplier members, so that students can learn about the circularity of aluminum beverage cans and directly contribute to more used beverage cans becoming new cans,” said CMI President Scott Breen. “Recycling aluminum beverage cans comes with significant environmental and economic benefits. We are excited to join the Million Cans Recycling Contest for the third consecutive year and look forward to surpassing last year’s record of more than 1.6 million beverage cans collected for recycling.”
Prizes and incentives offered
Schools will receive cash incentives and prizes for reaching specific recycling goals, including pizza and ice cream parties for selected grades. The top three schools that recycle the most beverage cans per student will receive end-of-year bonuses.
Students in selected grades will receive a free copy of “The Girl Who Recycled 1 Million Cans,” a children’s book that inspired the contest three years ago.
“Like the character in our book – Ellie, The Girl Who Recycled 1 Million Cans – I can’t wait to see how many beverage cans our amazing recycling superheroes collect this year,” said Recycling Society Executive Director Jessica Alexanderson.
Schools from 14 states are participating, including Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington and West Virginia.
You can follow along and track the progress of students participating in the Million Cans Recycling Contest at https://recyclingsociety.org/ and across social media with the hashtag: #MillionCans.
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