CENTERVILLE —

Covered in mud and sweating profusely, 375 students from PENNCREST School District demonstrated their commitment to the environment Wednesday by dragging 9,000 waste tires up the banks of a ravine and loading them into tractor trailers for recycling.

Getting out of school for half of the day was an added bonus.

“It’s just a really great way to spend the day,” said Dillon Holder, 15, of Cambridge

Springs High School. “I’ve never volunteered for a community service project before, but knowing what tires do to the environment makes the hard work worthwhile.”

It was the third time students joined for the tire reclamation project, but even after four more tractor-trailer loads were hauled out Wednesday, enough remained in the trenches of the headwaters of Oil Creek for one more waste removal session.

Students began several years ago, initiated by Maplewood High School students and developed into an interactive learning experience. Former Maplewood High School senior Nathan Renaudin and his biology teacher, Jason Drake, initiated the community effort with seniors Samantha Taylor, Kevin Sawatsky and Case Kunick.

Drake has kept the project alive with funding provided by the Milken Family Foundation as a way of teaching kids the vital roles they play in society.

“It is important to provide opportunities for young people to give back to their community and to ‘walk the walk’ and not just ‘talk the talk,’” he said. “These days we hear lots of talk about ‘change,’ but we are interested in actually implementing change through our understanding of science; we are recognizing a problem and creating solutions.”

The “monumental recycling project” has become an integral portion of the environmental science curriculum at Maplewood, Cambridge Springs and Saeger-town high schools because it exemplifies many environmental and health concerns facing our planet and “fits perfectly with our Pennsylvania science and technology and even more so with our Pennsylvania environment and ecology standards.”

Drake said there have been three tire reclamation efforts, but the “solid waste issue” has been a topic of discussion for at least five years and has been a catalyst for debate and discussion. Maplewood High School hosted a forum several years ago that featured experts who shed light on the breadth of the waste tire problem, as well as the impact on the surrounding environment.

Tires that aren’t properly disposed of pose a variety of health and environmental concerns, said Mariah Kinney, 16, of Maplewood High School.

“Not only can toxins be released into the air if these tires were to catch on fire, but the chemicals could seep into the ground and affect the water supply,” Kinney said. “Other dangers from tire dumps are that they are breeding grounds for rodents and mosquitos that can carry and transmit West Nile Virus.”

Students in a 50-foot-long chain passed tires from the bottom of the creek bed to students in the back of a tractor trailer who stacked them in a woven pattern. There were four trucks, each with a 1,500-tire capacity.