Empty Amazon boxes became a lucrative thing for a pair of Osceola High School Junior ROTC cadets.
But the greater good of what they did is to help keep their campus and neighborhoods clean.
Kissimmee company Underground Refuse System sponsored a challenge to the ROTC cadets prior to the winter school break to collect and recycle empty Amazon boxes. URS donated their proprietary trash bins, one for recyclables and the other for regular waste, to the school, with a personalized OHS Kowboys wrap.
At that time, company President Jay Wheeler offered $500 gift cards to the male and female cadet who brought in the most boxes for recycling.
“Amazon produces a lot of cardboard, and could recycle it themselves,” Wheeler said.
He’d planned to make the prizes Amazon gift cards, but because the company was invited to participate but chose not to, Wheeler said, they were $500 Best Buy cards, and last week they were awarded to Cadet Staff Sgt. Shainaly DeJesus Diaz and Cadet Lt. Col. Angel Trejo.
“I told a neighbor about it, and she was ecstatic so I got all her boxes,” said DeJesus, who brought in 55 boxes. “And my mom’s a teacher, so she put out the word and they came in.”
Trejo said much the same thing; he worked his family and the neighborhood and brought in 126 boxes.
“They add up over time, especially if you have Prime,” he said. “The fact that so many came in, I was in a little disbelief.”
The ROTC program alone brought in 441 boxes, which all went into the URS recycle bin, which has sensor technology — if those boxes filled up the bin, a message would go out to a specially-designed truck to come empty it.
ROTC Lt. Col. David LaTour said the goal was 500 boxes, but getting 441 of them into the URS bin was just a piece of the ROTC’s school conservation plan, Operation Keep OHS Clean and Green.
“Those boxes could have ended up here, on in a landfill,” LaTour said. “Trying to keep the campus free from trash is a way to change culture at the school, and it’s an actionable item. It’s human nature that people won’t leave trash at a place that’s clean.”
Every other Saturday, the group spreads across campus and collects upwards of 55 pounds of trash — a lot when you consider a candy wrapper weighs about an ounce.
It’s a small — and for DeJesus Diaz and Trejo, lucrative — part of a program to keep the OHS campus trash-free.
