Here's My Great Green Idea!

We are going to produce the world's largest crayon in the fall of 2008. Currently, Crayola claims to have made the largest crayon at 15 ft tall weighing 1,500 lbs, however, they did not register this project with Guinness (that we can tell). Our plans will make our crayon bigger than theirs just to be sure that ours is indeed the largest. Liberty County is home to the 3rd ID, Fort Stewart, the largest military installation east of the Mississippi River and this project has already become something talked about in our community, that people are looking forward to, especially children and mothers who can focus on this instead of their loved ones in harms way. Keep Liberty County Beautiful is the unifying organization for this project, with many other collaborative partners. This organization is dedicated to keeping our community clean and beautiful and the idea behind it is to keep these crayons out of our landfills, off of roadways, etc. as well as providing a creative and fun way to show kids how to recycle and how much a small contribution can make to a larger whole. Collaborating with many local agencies and people like the Board of Education, we have begun to accrue crayons from throughout our community. Crayola used 123,000 to make their crayon and our goal is to use 130,000 or more. We will complete the project with the help of an engineer and welder who are planning to create a large pipe in which the crayons, sans paper, can be placed and then the pipe heated and cooled. After the pipe has cooled it should slide off of the crayon. We will measure this based on the Crayola "record" of 15ft, 1,500 pounds and 123,000 crayons, making sure that all of our stats beat their record. We are doing this for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the community involvement that it creates between so many different groups, bringing them together towards one common goal. We also think about the recycling angle and education of young people. We plan to use all colors of crayons, which will really show the "melting pot" that our community is with the very large military presence that we have and all of the different cultures, ethnicities, etc. People in our community are really excited already about the prospect of this project and have already started collecting their crayons for the record!
Putting a project like this in the minds of young people in our community is invaluable as it creates top-of-mind awareness for youth when it comes to recycling. This project has also shown the adults in our community that our youth value the community. The Largest Crayon Project also saves tax payer dollars since Liberty County currently has to haul solid waste to another community for landfill purposes.