Editor's note: The 2012 Nevada County Writing Tournament for seventh and eighth grade students was held Jan. 11 at the Miners Foundry in Nevada City. The following are the winners for expository writing on recycling.

7th Grade, 1st Place — Leo Zlimen, Seven Hills

Did you know that it takes 900,000 tons of plastic and 1.5 million barrels of oil to bottle 8 billion gallons of water?

This is only a fraction of all the resources we use to create items we use every day, such as paper, tin cans, and plastic bags. In order to help preserve our resources and the environment, groups have been formed that reuse and recycle the materials we use.

One of these groups is right here in Nevada County — it's the program called Nevada County Recycles!

Everything we have we make using materials from the planet, such as trees, oil, and water. However, once we finish using these items, where do they go?

Unfortunately, in many parts of the world, they just get thrown away, never to be used again.

Fortunately, there is another option – several others, in fact. Instead of just throwing things away, we can reduce, reuse, repair, restore, rethink, research, recover, and recycle.

The law AB939 required California to reduce its solid waste by 50 percent by the year 2000. Nevada County Recycles responded to this by creating a program called Household Hazardous Waste.

The program would take hazardous materials and prevent them from ending up in a landfill. These materials included electronics, batteries, tires, lightbulbs, and old CD's and DVD's.

In addition to this program, Nevada County Recycles also hired a team to educate businesses and the public about recycling. The final step was to use curbside single stream recycling to divert all recycled materials to the same place in order to collect more of it.

By doing all of these things, Nevada County Recycles achieved their goal of reducing Nevada County's solid waste by 50 percent.

So, what can be recycled? The answer: Almost everything! This list includes paper, glass, aluminum cans, containers, plastics, cardboard, tin, aerosol cans, and plastic cans. All of this can be recycled.

You might be surprised to know that just 1 ton of recycled paper saves 17 trees, enough oil to drive to Colorado and back, 6 months of power for your home, and saves the air we breath from 60 pounds of pollution.

And all of this for just 1 ton of recycled paper. These numbers also tell us how much energy we waste when we don't recycle.

At school, you probably have a paper recycling bin as well as a trash can. Paper recycling makes up about 40 percent of what we recycle at school.

However, that number can, and should, go up. Remember, “Anything that tears” can be recycled!

Our planet really is incredible. And every time we recycle, we can help it to stay that way. So how can we help recycle?

There are many groups and organizations that give us a way to protect our planet. And while these groups are doing the right thing, there's another way for you to help the environment. Almost everything we buy is packaged with plastic or Styrofoam, both of which take up huge amounts of resources to create. Remember, you are the one who will buy it. Don't buy things just because your best friend has one! Only buy things if you need them. It's your money, and it's your planet!

Everyone creates waste, so everyone has a role in protecting our planet from it. Just remember the amount of resources it takes just to bottle 8 billion gallons of water. The more we recycle, the more we can help our environment, and the more we can help create a safe, beautiful, and incredible environment for the generations to come.

7th Grade, 2nd Place — Adriana Moses, Magnolia

When people think of saving the world, most immediately think ‘recycle.' But what should you do before you recycle? You need to reduce the amount of what you consume, reuse what you already have, restore old, broken down items, and then, you are ready to recycle.

Daria Kent, who works in the Sanitation Division of Nevada County Recycles, is very passionate about all four of these ‘r' words. First, she tells us, comes reduce. Every person has purchasing power. Think before you purchase. Is there unnecessary packaging? Do you actually need what you're about to buy? If not, then don't buy it! If people were to stop buying materials that were far too packaged to make them look better, the company would stop over packaging.

Secondly, comes reuse. Alright, so say your favorite T-shirt got to small for you. Instead of just throwing it away, give it to your little sister, or your friend that's shorter than you. You can reuse water bottles, clothing, toys, almost anything!

After reusing, comes restoring. Often times when things are broken, they immediately get thrown away. Sometimes, they could even be hazardous waste that will get put in landfills, contaminating soil and poisoning water. Instead of throwing things away, you could restore them or maybe even use them in a different way than before.

Finally, comes the big ‘r.' Recycle. Just about anything can be recycled. Paper, glass, aluminum foil or containers, plastic, cardboard, tin, and plastic bags. Paper is one of the most important things to recycle. One billion trees worth of paper are thrown away in the USA every year. If everybody saved one ton of paper, it would save seventeen trees, provide energy for your house for six months, enough oil to drive to Colorado and back, and save sixty pounds of pollution from going into the air. At Nevada County Recycles, every year they save half of the trash from going into landfills and send the recyclable objects to Lodi, where they are sorted. After that they go on the market where China will usually buy them, make something else out of it, and then sell it to the USA.

In conclusion, reducing, reusing, restoring, and recycling are all very important to the planet. If we could increase the amount of items being recycled to 80 or 90 percent the world would be a much better place.

7th Grade, 3rd Place — Cora O'Sullivan, Chicago Park

Recycling saves lives, money, and our planet Earth we call home. It saves seventeen trees per ton of paper and makes you enough oil to get to Colorado and back. Recycling also powers your home for six months and saves our air from sixty pounds of pollution. Recycling is amazing. Extraordinary. Extravagant.

There are nine “r”s for recycling. They are reduce, reuse, repair, rethink, restore, research, reprocess, recover, and finally, recycle. The organization that wants us to recycle is the Department of Public Work and Sanitation Division. This organization was mandated to reduce waste by fifty percent by the year 2000. They did it, all right. They accomplished this by using curbside singlestream recycling, opening a Household Hazardous Waste area, and hiring a number of people to educate the public about recycling and how extremely important this is about recycling. Recycling affects the environment, air, water, plants, and man-made things. When you throw out recyclable items, it messes with the ground water and our soil. Daria Kent, our speaker, said this, “Everyone creates waste; everyone has a role.”

There are many, many items that can be recycled. For example, paper, glass, aluminum foil, cardboard, tin and there is so much more. There are also things that cannot be recycled. They are icky, sticky and gooey things, film plastic, plastic bags without the recycling arrows, and Styrofoam. All of this recyclable items go into a Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) in Lodi. It is processed through an automated and manual process before being bailed. Then, after creating a product, it gets sold to markets.

A plastic bottle manufacturer generates more than 2.2 million tons of carbon dioxide each year. It's the plastic, not the water that counts. Recycling bottles saves money and your planet. For you get $10.40 per pound which is approximately two bottles. As for plastic, it makes $0.05 for containers.

Throwing recyclable items means inefficiency! You do have the power to change what people throw away. One of the best things about recycling is that it is … FREE!!! You can impact the world's systems, and you can make a difference!

In the 1600's the upper, middle, and lower east was polluted. There was also some pollution in the upper north as well. This lessoned, and soon the US barely has any pollution because people cared to recycle. Recycling is just plain logical.

Don't you see what this world needs? It needs people; people to stand up and make a difference! It's so simple. Recycling can become a habit, like brushing your teeth. Why not start now?

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8th Grade, 1st Place — Joy Castro-Wehr, Yuba River Charter

In an interview with Dr. Oz, a representative from the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) was asked “What is the most important message you can leave with us?” Her response – “Recycling is in and of itself … life.”

The interview was set to take place on December 2nd, 2011. Questions were all along the same topic ‘What can we do to save our ailing environment?” The notorious word is being used more and more – recycle. To save, or at least begin to protect our planet, we must reconsider the way we view our precious resources. They are not there at our disposal. Actually, we are here to protect and respect them. Daria Kent of Nevada County Recycles spoke this morning on her job, and what it meant to be in office with her position, but also why we, the younger generation, are crucial in the preservation of our planet's natural resources. She began with some history and background.

As recycling coordinator, it is Daria's job to oversee the disposal of our waste. To ensure potentially hazardous materials are properly disposed of, and to inspire. Our waste here in Nevada County has been lessened by 50 percent since the term “recycling” first hit. When recycling became as simple as tossing all of your reusable goods in one can, the wasteful by-products of our consumerist's every-day life dropped by 25 percent. A phrase used by Daria, and others to explain the idea of reusing our waste goes like this: reduce, reuse, repair, rethink, restore, reprocess, research, recover, and finally, recycle. That this word comes last on the list implies that, while the act of recycling contributes enormously, we must first reconsider our culture's paradigm. We must re-imagine how our lives could be lived. For the present, here are some statistics …

Paper consists of 40 percent of our school's waste – that is quite a forest of insustainability! By recycling one ton of our waste (collectively, this wouldn't be very much), we would save enough energy to power our home for 6 months, save 17 trees from the logging companies, eliminate 60 lbs of carbon dioxide from our atmosphere – not to mention how we'd save enough gas to fuel one car from Colorado and back! Those innocent, crackly little plastic water bottles actually have a nasty environmental past: 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide are released into the sky each year. All this detrimental impact, just so we can use a sip of water from “Fiji” to hydrate ourselves, then toss the bottle into a can without second thought. One billion bottles of water alone are shipped into the United States each year. This doesn't include soda cans, milk cartons (plastic ones) or juice bottles. When all these are recycled, one can make clothing, bags, more bottles, even stuffed animals from pieces of oil; every item we by should have a chance at a 2nd life.

Luckily, people, companies, groups and organization are beginning to take into their hands the future of our planet's health. Instead of sending all of our potentially hazardous electronics over-seas to third-world countries, Nevada County was privileged to receive a grant from the State of California to fund our own Hazardous Waste Facility. By doing so, petroleum is being saved, because heavy carriers no longer must cross huge amounts of ocean, and, most importantly, lives are being protected. They young children whose job it was to pick through our waste are much safer, now that we can process used light-bulbs, batteries, old TV sets, etc … right here in the State of California.

But what's in it for us? By maintaining unsustainable practices, our money, our planet and our very lives are being harmed. I believe that, while recycling is a helpful, and very crucial step to protecting our beautiful plant re-imagining what we “need” in life will truly make a difference to the world. Rethinking our power as consumers, there is hope that, one day soon, our world will glimpse the beautiful hope that environmental sustainability and awareness brings.

“Recycling is just plain logical.” — Daria Kent

8th Grade, 2nd Place — Jessica Burgess, Clear Creek

Save the earth? Recycle.

Save money? Recycle.

Save lives? …. That's right. Recycle.

Those sentences formed in my head as I watched a slim woman in brown talk to us about recycling. Daria Kent is the coordinator for the organization Nevada County Recycling. She makes sure all the recycling is taken care of, and she loves her job. “It's a job that I have a lot of passion for, that I love.” But why? My theory is that she loves making a difference in the world. A few years ago California was mandated to reduce the trash output by 50%. We found many different ways to achieve that. Among them was curbside single streaming, which is where you can put all your recyclables together and don't have to sort them out, and putting paper recycling bins in schools across the county. Because 40% of the average school's waste stream is paper, this took a huge chunk out of what is going into our landfills.

You can recycle so many different things. Plastics, cardboard, glass, paper, aluminum…the list goes on and on! As Daria Kent says, “Waste, and how we choose to handle it, affects the environment.” But only you can choose how the environment is affected. For one, just think of “R” words. Repair, Rethink, Reuse, Reduce, Restore, Recover and Recycle, to name a few. But why take that extra time to recycle? What's in it for you? When you Recycle, you reduce your ecological footprint, save money, and can even save lives! When you take your electronics to a California Hazardous Waste Center, you are saving the lives of poverty-stricken dump foragers in third world countries. Young children pawing through the town trash heap are a lot less likely to hurt themselves on electronics if the electronics are not there!

You have the power to make a difference. To save the earth. To save money. To save lives. In addition, according to the speaker Daria Kent, “Recycling is just plain logical.”

8th Grade, 3rd Place — Meg Anderson, Mount St. Mary's Academy

Have you ever wondered what happens to your recycled materials after you have them collected? You have probably never even thought about it. Daria Kent from Nevada County Recycles thinks about those types of things for a living.

She is a recycling coordinator. You may think recycling is the first resort to help the environment, but it's not. Recycling is the last option. It may seem weird that it's the last. Some that come before are reduce, reuse, rethink, repair, reprocess, restore, research, and recover. California was required to reduce 50% of our waste by the year 2000. That seems like a lot. We achieved that goal by hiring a team of experts to educate the public about our waste, constructing a hazardous waste facility, and creating a single stream recycling program.

There is no “away” with our waste and everybody creates it. In Nevada County we recycle almost everything. We recycle paper, glass, aluminum, plastics, cardboard, tin, empty aerosol cans, and believe it or not plastic bags. We can't recycle everything for example products without recycling arrows can not be recycled. The Styrofoam that comes with electronics and is given out by restaurants that you take your food home in cannot be recycled. In California you soon won't find Styrofoam in places like that because it will no longer be allowed.

Household hazardous wastes are a big problem. That is why we created a place to properly take care of it. This waste contaminates soil and pollutes our waters. This type of waste which includes electronics and batteries was being sent to third world countries. The people there were taking them apart and endangering their lives. You probably didn't think it was a big deal when you threw away your old electronics, but you were actually endangering someone's life.

Paper is a product that almost everyone recycles. Forty percent of an average school's waste stream is paper. Anything that tears is considered paper and can be recycled. One ton of recycled paper can actually provide you with enough gas to drive you to Colorado and back, power your house for six months, saves seventeen trees, and saves the air we breathe from sixty pounds of pollution.

Disposal water bottles are used every day, but there are ways to prevent these water bottles from going into landfills you could buy a reusable water bottle or just recycle them. There are one billion transported each week. Those trucks carrying them are creating carbon dioxide that goes into the air. We could prevent that just by using a reusable water bottle.

Recycling is turning into a big deal. Just by recycling you can earn money for your school. Fundraisers are easy to plan and can raise a lot of money. From our trash alone forest all over the United States are declining. Next time you go to the store think about what your buying and think about its affect it will have on our country, environment, and ultimately the world.