Queanbeyan West Public School students lived up to their school motto, “Nothing but the Best”, when named the winners of the national MobileMuster Schools Recycling Challenge which coincided with National Recycling Week, 2008. Queanbeyan West beat more than 300 schools with their mobile phone recycling efforts.

 

The MobileMuster Schools Challenge was created by the official recycling program of the mobile phone industry, MobileMuster, to help students learn about mobile phone recycling and to encourage them to round up and recycle all old and unused mobile phones lying around homes.

 

Queanbeyan West Public School rounded up a mammoth 136 kg of mobile phones, batteries, chargers and accessories, which was fifteen times the average school collection of 9 kg. 

 

Nationally, participating schools collected 2,130 kg of mobile phones for recycling, including an estimated 10,520 handsets.

 

Queanbeyan West Public School’s collection included more than 660 mobile phone handsets - nearly two mobiles per student.

With more than 90% of the plastics and metals in the mobiles being recovered during recycling it was estimated that the students helped recover 12.2 kg of plastics, 7.4 kg of copper, 1.9 kg of silver and 4 grams of gold.  Four grams of recovered gold alone is equal to mining one tonne of gold ore.

 

In recognition of their efforts Queanbeyan West Public School received a $900 gift voucher to purchase native tree stock from their local Greening Australia Nursery and each student received a MobileMuster backpack.

 

 State winners in the MobileMuster National Schools Recycling Challenge were:  

 

• ACT – North Ainslie Primary School, Ainslie – 28 kg

• NSW - Queanbeyan West Primary School, Queanbeyan NSW – 136 kg

• NT – Durack Primary School, Durack, NT – 11 kg

• QLD – Albany Hills State School, Albany Creek - 44 kg

• SA – Portside Christian School, Estella, SA – 22 kg

• VIC – Mackellar Primary School SE,  Delahey, VIC – 36 kg

• WA – Mundaring Primary School, Mundaring, WA – 33 kg

 

Each school and their students also received a selection of rewards,  including pencil case kits, slap wrist watches, back packs and gift vouchers to purchase native trees from Greening Australia or Men of Trees (WA only) nurseries, depending on how many kilograms of mobile phones they collected.