The students at Rhodes Elementary School had a special visit from Pat Perry and her sidekick, Max Man, from the Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corporation (RIRRC) on Monday afternoon as Reading Week began at the school. In keeping with the theme of "Build a Better World," Perry and Max Man spoke to the students about their ability to save the world, by recycling.

Perry went over the updated rules for mixed recycling with the students, showing them actual examples of things that can and cannot be recycled as she went along. She spoke to them about the fact that the landfill will eventually have to be closed.

"One way to help solve that problem is to make trash smaller and to recycle bigger," she said. "That will help to make the landfill last longer, and we only have one landfill in Rhode Island."

She spoke to the students about how much easier the rules for recycling have become and gave them three simple guidelines to follow when trying to decide whether or not plastic items are recyclable.

"Is it plastic? Is it smaller than five gallons? Is it a container?" she said. "It's so easy, even adults can do it."

She tried to trick the students by showing them a straw, which they recognized as not being recyclable because it was not a container.

She explained that glass jars or bottles can be recycled, and their metal covers can be recycled, but separately from the bottles. Items such as drinking glasses and light bulbs, although glass, cannot be recycled because they do not fit the jar or bottle criteria.

Perry also held up a pizza box and told the students that although they did not used to qualify for recycling, they now can as long as there is not a large amount of grease and cheese left in them.

Holding up a plastic grocery bag, she told the students that if they can be stretched, they can be recycled, and ultimately end up being made into T-Rex, which is a solid material used for building decks, benches and fences. She also spoke to the students about how dangerous the bags are for birds and other animals outdoors, such as swans and hawks, for example.

Once Perry had given the students an overview of the rules for recycling, Max Man burst into the room and talked to the students about being a special kind of superhero, one who helps to save the world. Max Man gave the students some important statistics regarding the recycling of paper.

"Half of the stuff in the landfill is things like paper, which can be recycled," he said. "Trees are made into paper, paper can be made into newspaper, and newspaper can be made into tissue paper, so if you're throwing away paper without reusing it, you're making the trash bigger and bigger and we need to cut down more and more trees to make things, when you could've recycled. One piece of paper can be recycled again and again. Every person in this room uses so much paper each year that it takes seven trees to make the 700 pounds of paper that one person uses each year. We're all going to use seven trees' worth of paper this year, but we don't want to throw seven trees away, do we?"

He asked the students to look around the room at their peers.

"Pretend that everyone in the room is a tree, now multiply that by seven," he said. "That's the forest you just saved this year. Trees help us breathe, and they help to clean the air. Helping to save the trees helps us to breathe. It's that simple to save the Earth. If we went all over America this summer and collected all of the aluminum cans that people in America used in June, July and August, we would have enough aluminum to rebuild all of the planes in America."

He reminded the students that being a special kind of superhero is not that hard when they recycle.

"You can make a difference, you can help to save the world," he said. "You have the power in your hands to help to save the world."