Decaturville Elementary earns $1,500 grant for campus recycling bins

Decaturville Elementary School is putting new recycling bins across its campus after earning a $1,500 grant from the Tennessee Recycling Coalition in partnership with Nobody Trashes Tennessee.

The money will expand recycling beyond a single classroom or one-off project and into the places where students move every day at 820 South West St. in Decaturville. With bins spread throughout the school, the program is set up to be easier for students, teachers, custodians and visitors to use, which is often what makes a recycling effort stick.

For Decatur County Schools, the grant is a practical upgrade with an education angle. The campus, led by Principal Christee Pettigrew, already has a point of pride in being named a Reward School for the 2024-2025 school year. Now the school is adding a visible waste-reduction effort that can reinforce lessons about responsibility, cleanup and conservation in a building that serves local children every day.

The project also ties Decaturville Elementary to a statewide anti-litter campaign. Nobody Trashes Tennessee launched in June 2017 as the state’s official effort to prevent littering and raise awareness about waste. It sits under the Tennessee Department of Transportation’s Highway Beautification Office, alongside programs such as Adopt-A-Highway, Keep Tennessee Beautiful, the Litter Hotline and the TDOT Litter Grant.

That larger network matters because the school’s recycling push is not just about one campus looking cleaner. It gives Decatur County students a chance to learn habits that can carry into homes, ballfields and other public spaces across the county. The real test will be whether the new bins make recycling simple enough to become part of daily school routine and whether the school can show less waste going to the trash.

Decatur County Schools, based at 59 West Main Street in Decaturville, is led by Director of Schools Melinda J. Thompson. The district’s central office and Decaturville Elementary now have a small but concrete example of outside funding at work: a modest grant that could produce a bigger shift in how children think about trash, recycling and stewardship on campus.

Tennessee has also continued to fund related projects through the Department of Environment and Conservation, which announced $332,953 in Education and Outreach and Organics Management grants on July 17, 2024, including school-related recycling and composting work. For Decaturville Elementary, the $1,500 award may be small, but its measure of success will come in everyday use, not headlines.