Three area middle school students in Catawba Science Center’s Critical Thinking Institute 2 were challenged to come up with ideas on how Carolina Container could recycle and save money. It wasn’t an easy task considering the Hickory plant already recycles more than 80 percent of its scrap material.

On Friday, the students presented a Microsoft PowerPoint illustrating the cost-saving suggestions they came up with.  Already, the company is looking at implementing many of their ideas into the recycling of materials it used to waste like copy paper, polyurethane and aluminum cans.

“The first day it was really hard because everything they do is so good for the environment,” Laurel Diciuccio, a rising eighth-grader at Maiden Middle School, said.

The team were first challenged with a critical thinking exercise to help them think creatively.  The students were asked to design something out of scrap materials that serves a purpose and has at least one moving part.

Within 30 minutes, the students had a tank, complete with rubber band rocket launcher and a sight for accuracy.

“It helps you to think differently and outside the box,” Diciuccio said.

Diciuccio and her teammates, Nathaniel Drum of Maiden Middle and Madison Temple from Granite Falls Middle, toured the corrugated cardboard manufacturing plant on Monday before getting to work thinking up new and innovate ways for the company to save.

“I remember watching people work at the machines and seeing 20 cardboard boxes coming out in a matter of seconds (off the machines) and being stacked up,” Drum said.

With a basic working knowledge of how the plant operates and what it does, they team started analyzing the different areas of the plant from the production floor to the offices.

“It’s difficult because what we make lends itself to recycling so much already,” Plant Manager Brian Healy said.

Healy said the students offered a fresh perspective since they were not already inundated with the process from seeing it everyday.

“These kids seem to have a really good grasp of sustainability issues,” Chris Lyon, sustainability manager for Carolina Container, said.

Carolina Container has participated in the Critical Thinking Institute for five years now.  Last year, the students were asked to develop a method of organization for a storage area that would best utilize the space.  Many of the former group’s suggestions are already in place.

“I hope if nothing else they take away what the real work experience is like, both in the front office and on the factory floor,” Healy said.

He said he also hopes they learned what it means to work as a team after seeing how Carolina Container employees work together toward a common goal.

Carolina Container has already ordered automatic hand dryers for its bathrooms, as the students suggested, Healy said. He said the rest of their ideas will be discussed during the plant’s next Green Team Sustainability meeting next month.