Six local schools collected and recycled old and broken small appliances and power tools on June 22 as part of a competition for charity.

ElectroRecycle, the non-profit program hosting the recycling challenge, donated $1,000 on behalf of the winning school to the Nicola Valley and District Food Bank.

Merritt Central Elementary School won the competition with 1,025 pounds of recycled goods, beating out Merritt Secondary School and Collettville, Diamond Vale, Bench, and Nicola-Canford elementary schools.

Nicola-Canford Elementary finished second with 429 lbs.

Central also won a pizza party for the school.

Each school had a bin set up for people to drop off their small electronic appliances in support of their desired school.

Mayor Susan Roline was at the Return-It Depot for the event and told the Herald she thinks having a permanent place for people to bring their old electronics is great for the city.

“We find, when we’re trying to enforce different bylaws, something we’re running into is people’s accumulation of items and they don’t know what to do with them,” Roline said. “They feel bad about throwing them to the landfill because they know that they don’t decompose fast. Having this facility now I think is terrific for Merritt.”

Earlier this year, the Merritt Return-It Depot finished first in the ElectroRecycle Depot Challenge.

The challenge pitted 13 other depots against each other in the Thompson-Okanagan region in a contest to see which one could increase its collection rates the most over a two-month period.

So far over 12,000 pounds of electrical products have been collected for Merritt ElectroRecycle.

ElectroRecycle Ambassadors James Shaw and Eric Liu held the event at the Merritt Return-It Depot on Blair Street. A group of six summer students are travelling across the province to raise awareness and educate people about the ElectroRecycle program.

Liu said the great result from the Merritt Return-It Depot reflects well on the city.

“As the only place that takes this stuff in town, I think it’s a great reflection on the community and how committed they are to recycling,” Liu said.

ElectroRecycle has 135 locations in B.C. and provides an environmentally friendly alternative to landfills for electrical products such as toasters, blenders, irons, sewing machines and electric toothbrushes.

At the Merritt event, the ambassadors had an ElectroRecycle booth set up with an educational sorting game on recycling and face painting.

There were also some giveaways and a barbecue for visitors.