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Three Redwood City students won ReThinkWaste’s 12th annual poster design contest in mid-October. This year’s theme was “Mending Magic,” encouraging youth to draw ways one can fix worn, torn or broken items. First-place posters from the elementary and middle school individual categories will be featured on the side of Recology collection trucks later this year.
One of them, Gio Z., a third grader at Orion Alternative Elementary School in Redwood City, won first place in the elementary school individual category for his project entitled “Repurposing is Magic.”
“I drew a wizard using magic to show how repurposing and upcycling can transform things and give them a new life instead of throwing them away, because repurposing is magic!” said Gio in an email. “Anything is possible when you can reuse materials that you don’t need anymore to create something new. Creating something new from something old is the magic.”
Gio saw information about the contest in second grade and was bummed he missed last year’s deadline. For a whole year, every month he asked if it was time for the poster contest, according to his mother, Vetty Graham. He spent two days working on his poster design, according to Graham.
“He had such joy and he told us he felt so good about himself and he knew he could do it!” Graham said in an email. “This contest gave him a forever happy place in his heart that he accomplished something on his own that he worked on, that truly was important to him.”
The two other Redwood City winners are North Star Academy seventh graders Marcie H. (first place, middle school) and Cate L. (second place). Marcie’s piece is called “Beauty Born from Broken Pieces,” and Cate’s is titled “Mending Magic in Sewing,” according to an Oct. 13 ReThinkWaste press release.
The competition was open to students in grades 3-8 who live in the agency’s service area. This year, there were 20 original submissions, representing seven schools. This year, a new class category encouraged class and student groups to submit a poster. Students at Audubon Elementary School in Foster City won the class category.
RethinkWaste, which owns and manages the Shoreway Environmental Center in San Carlos, where all collected trash, recyclable and compostable materials are processed for San Mateo County.
RethinkWaste presented the awardees with certificates of recognition and eco-friendly prizes at the Rethink Recycling Day event at the Shoreway Environmental Center on Oct. 17. The Redwood City Council is set to recognize the winners during its Nov. 23 meeting.
View all winning posters on the RethinkWaste website. The posters may also appear in RethinkWaste newsletters and other educational materials.
