By Marie Pfeifer
In 1970, Kermit the Frog was lamenting the color of his skin when he sang, It’s Not Easy Being Green.
In 2011, “being green” means responsible environmental stewardship.
At the Allegro School for children and adults with autism in Cedar Knolls, that means being part of a program that teaches students ages 16 through 22 how to dismantle and recycle unwanted electronics, or e-waste, based on the concept of the “reverse supply chain.”
The program, Green Vision, was developed by Tim Butler and Kevin Davidovich, teachers at the Allegro School for the last decade.
They began a tools program three years ago in which participants built bird houses, bat houses and the like.
When they saw the interest and capabilities the program generated in their students, the idea of training the students to break down electronics parts was born.
“Green Vision is challenging the students with tasks that allow them to use problem-solving skills while dismantling a wide variety of devices,” Butler said. “Each year, Americans discard over 400 million units of e-waste. Only 12 percent is being recycled.
“As the students dismantle the computers, servers and other electronics, and anything with a plug, they sort the materials into the appropriate bins so that they can be recycled. We are 99.7 percent landfill-free, and all of our recyclable materials go to federally licensed facilities.”
According to the Allegro School website, in 2010 Green Vision recycled 159,109 pounds of materials including rare metals such as platinum and gold. The materials are sold to vendors to raise funds that support the nonprofit program.
“Green jobs are usually associated with clean-energy construction projects,” said County College of Morris Adjunct Professor Beth Kujan, PhD, who teaches a program called Certificate of Sustainable Practices for the Workplace.
“These jobs are relatively temporary. Recycling, or more generally reverse supply-chain work, is very concrete – a meaningful job for someone who may be passed over in the high-tech world.”
Kujan recently joined the board of the newly formed nonprofit Green Vision Inc., an outgrowth of the Allegro School program. The spinoff will continue to develop skills of autistic adolescents and adults with a goal toward employment, along with furthering recycling efforts.
Autism is a complex developmental disability that affects a person’s ability to communicate and interact with others, according to the Autism Society website. It is defined by a certain set of behaviors and affects individuals differently and to varying degrees. Autism touches one in every 110 births in the United States and almost one in 70 boys, according to a December 2009 report by the Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network.
Given these statistics, Butler said, “Green Vision is not only environmentally important, but it is important that the students continue to develop themselves. In the past, once they aged out of the school they stayed at home and risked losing most of the benefit they had gained from the programs here.”
Anyone who wishes to donate their e-waste, such as old computers, servers and printers, can contact Tim Butler and Kevin Davidovich at 973-551-0985, or via their website.
Very informative,well researched and well written.This is certainly a timely subject because so many families today are dealing with autism.