TISS Students Save Lives By Saving
Batteries from the Trash Can

(Pictured above: TISS students Sarah Callaghan and Justin Vanderlinden stand beside
thousands of batteries collected under the You Have the Power Initiative.) 

(Brockville) – Students at Thousand Islands Secondary School (TISS) are helping improve the health of sick children in the Third World by helping people here lead greener lives.

Grade 12 students who are members of the school’s Humanitarian Educational Leadership Programme (HELP) have launched the club’s You Have the Power initiative, an effort that is collecting used batteries from area residents and keeping them out of the waste stream. The batteries will be sent to a Mississauga company which will remove the zinc from the batteries and convert it into supplements that will be used to help sick children in Africa, Asia and South America battle zinc deficiency. Lack of zinc in the human diet can result in diarrhea – a disease that can be fatal to small children.

“Two billion people world-wide are not getting enough zinc through their diet and 1.5 million children die from diarrhea every year,” said Club President Sarah Callaghan, a Grade 12 student who co-leads the initiative with peer Justin Vanderlinden.  “Just one battery can save six people in one year.”

“It’s great because we’re helping the earth by helping people not throw away their batteries and we’re saving lives – and most of them are children under the age of five,” added Vanderlinden.

Batteries can be dropped off until this Friday at several locations in the Brockville area including: Giant Tiger, Canadian Tire, the Metro grocery store, and Future Shop as well as the school. So far, thousands of the batteries have been dropped off. The campaign is collecting standard household batteries including: A, AA, AAA, C, D, 9-volt and 6-volt versions. These are the batteries used in common household gadgets such as flashlights, video game controllers, smoke detectors and TV remotes. The campaign is discouraging the donation of car batteries and rechargeable batteries.

The batteries will be sent to a company called Teck in Mississauga as part of a pilot project involving TISS and only one other school in Canada. The company will extract the zinc and, in cooperation with a United Nations-sponsored program, it will be converted into an edible supplement that will be incorporated into a vitamin-rich powder that will be distributed to sick children in poor countries.

Teck will send a truck to pick up the batteries in the coming weeks.

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For more information, please call:

Brent Robillard
Teacher
Thousand Islands Secondary School
613-342-1100

Posted January 24, 2012