May 23, 2019
Yellowknife, NT - Students from Mildred Hall were celebrating today after once again being named the Northwest Territories’ top performing school in Northwestel’s annual directory recycling program. The Yellowknife-based elementary school collected 867 telephone directories and earned $750 in reward money from Northwestel.

Five NWT schools participated in this year’s challenge, saving a combined 1682 telephone directories from the landfill. Diamond Jenness Secondary School in Hay River is also being recognized for having the highest increase of directories collected over last year. The students improved their collection efforts by 22% and received a special $500 bonus award as a result.

“I am continually impressed by our northern students and their commitment to the environment,” says Northwestel President Curtis Shaw. “The kids take initiative, selflessly collecting thousands of old directories in order to fundraise for their schools’ environmental programs. Northwestel recognizes their efforts toward keeping communities green and we are pleased to reward their success.”

Students from Alexis Arrowmaker School in Wekweètì were able to participate for the first time, thanks to generous support from Air Tindi. The NWT-based airline picked up and transported directories from the small community out to Yellowknife for recycling.

Participating Yukon and Northern British Columbia schools are continuing their collection efforts with this year’s Directory Recycling program, which wraps up next month. Since the program began in 2002, more than 197,000 directories have been collected and recycled by students across the Yukon, Northern BC, Nunavut and the Northwest Territories. More information, along with a list of participating schools, is available at www.nwtel.ca/Directory-Recycling.

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Contact:
Matt Wallace
Manager, External Communications
(867) 455-4209
media@nwtel.ca