Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There is a program called Recycle My Cell, which is Canada’s national recycling program for mobile phones and cell phone accessories. I know a few people at least who would like to recycle my cell phone, but actually it’s still working quite well.
Today I would like to recognize a Hay River school, Princess Alexandra School, that was recently announced as the winner of the 4th National Recycle My Cell Student Challenge. In collaboration with the 2013 Waste Reduction Week in Canada, the challenge invited students from kindergarten to post-secondary to collect as many old wireless devices as possible, including cell phones, smartphones, wireless PDAs, pagers, accessories and cell phone batteries.
More than 140 Canadian schools from across the country participated in the 2013 edition of the challenge. The schools collected more than 3,500 wireless devices along with some 200 kilograms of wireless accessories and batteries.
The school that collected the most wireless devices in each participating province and territory based on student population received a $500 donation to support the school’s green initiatives.
The 13 winning schools in the 2013 Recycle My Cell Student Challenge were schools from cities clear across Canada including larger centres such as Calgary, Montreal, Charlottetown and Winnipeg.
It is exciting to see Hay River on this impressive list of schools and the students and staff at Princess Alexandra School can be proud of the work that they have done taking on this challenge and receiving the notable recognition of being one of the small number of winners of this program is a huge accomplishment.
The goal of this program is to inform Canadians about the environmental and social ramifications of wasteful practices with a take-action message to empower all Canadians to adopt more environmentally conscience choices.
Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join me in extending congratulations to Princess Alexandra School and to the residents of Hay River who participated by dropping off their used cell phones and accessories. Their efforts have been encouraging and I trust all of us will be prudent in disposing used equipment in an environmentally friendly manner. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The honourable Member for Range Lake, Mr. Dolynny.
