CAMARILLO : Students Get a Trash Course in Recycling

First, they donned brown paper trash bags adorned with empty cans, plastic bottles and labels from plant fertilizer. Then they crawled through a 10-foot-long replica of a storm drain.

And when they emerged, 30 elementary students at Camarillo’s Tierra Linda School dumped their trash into a kiddie pool--a stand-in for the Pacific Ocean.

The exercise was part of an earth awareness project put on by the Aquarian League, a group of Camarillo High School students who teach children about recycling and preserving the environment.

“When you put things in the storm drain, they all end up here, in the ocean,” Camarillo High junior Dawn Boger told the students, holding up the kiddie pool full of trash. “We end up swimming in all of that junk.”

“Ewwwww!” was the collective response from the students in teacher Donna Danell’s third-grade class.

But 9-year-old Chad Gonser said he was inspired to recycle by the group’s presentation, which included an environmental quiz show and an activity in which the kids made paper by shredding old newspapers in a blender, adding water and flattening the mixture with a rolling pin.

“There’s a big hill by my house where everybody throws cans,” Chad said to his friends. “I’m going to take my wagon up there and collect those cans.”

The Aquarian League was formed four years ago by Camarillo High English teacher Kevin Buddhu. It has about 15 active members, whose projects have included beach cleanups and setting up a recycling program at the school.

Buddhu said the group’s most important activity is teaching elementary students how to preserve their environment.

“Kids are very impressionable,” Buddhu said. “I still remember my first Earth Day. It was at my junior high school in 1970. That’s where I got started.”

Since then, Buddhu has been dedicated to preserving the environment, urging cities to start recycling programs and forming groups to stencil signs stating “Do Not Dump, Drains to Ocean” above Camarillo’s storm drains.

In two weeks, Buddhu said he will travel to Washington, D.C., to discuss education programs with members of the Environmental Protection Agency and to help schools in Fairfax, Va., set up student volunteer programs similar to the Aquarian League.