More than 2,500 pounds of crayons, courtesy of Norman Wrigley
4/30/2025
Crayons are a staple in art education for those in elementary school. The coolest kids and classrooms had the best colors, a sharpener and more crayons than one knew what to do with. What is often forgotten is what becomes of crayons near the end of their lifecycle — but not for Norman Wrigley.
Wrigley is the instructor at East Coast Tae Kwan Do in Altoona. Since 2017, he has been collecting crayons for the Crayon Initiative, an organization that takes used crayons and recycles them to be used in children’s hospitals across the U.S. Blank Children’s Hospital, MercyOne Children’s Hospital, ChildServe and the University of Iowa Children’s Hospital are hospital partners.
Wrigley is not sure how he heard about the organization in the first place.
“I don’t know how I stumbled upon it. My best guess is it had to come across Facebook at some point, and I just loved the thought and the idea,” Wrigley said.
To date, Wrigley has donated more than 2,500 pounds of crayons to the initiative. He has a collection box at his taekwondo studio and several locations around Altoona like city hall, libraries and schools. The crayons piled up quickly.
“That first shipment I think was 1,064 pounds. Then COVID hit, which screwed everything up for everybody. So, around the end of 2020 or into 2021, we started to slowly get back into it. It’s been a little challenge,” Wrigley said.
Getting all of those crayons from central Iowa to California poses a big challenge. Thankfully, the initiative partners with Staples to get the crayons shipped. Wrigley became a frequent customer.
“It got to the point where I just walk in with my box, and they would say, ‘Just put it down,’ and they would get another box or two for me,” Wrigley said.
Wrigley’s effort saw another 1,400 pounds of crayons donated during 2023-2024 to get him to that 2,500-pound total.
The initiative has two benefits: Children’s hospitals get crayons, and used crayons don’t end up in landfills.
“Crayons do not break down in the landfill. Once they go into the landfill, they’re there forever.”
A benefit for Wrigley? It helped give his students something to do.
“The kids in my first class, there’s a lot of things we do that they couldn’t be involved in, just because of age and mobility. I knew some teachers in the schools with some of our shy kids. They would take those students around to all the classrooms to talk about us collecting the crayons, to get them speaking in front of kids,” Wrigley said.
He said he used to have a colored bucket system set up so students and their siblings who had to come to school early or stay late could separate the crayons by color.
“It helped give our younger students something they could be involved in with the community, too.”
Wrigley has had individuals come in to drop off 15- to 20-pound bags of crayons before, but one donation stands above the rest in terms of size.
“Pre-COVID, Bondurant schools, nobody could come close to them,” Wrigley said.
Donations have slowed since the pandemic, but Wrigley is pushing to get to those pre-COVID numbers by getting more locations to agree to have boxes or buckets placed.
“The biggest thing we’re working on is getting that information out to have it in the back of people’s minds. It might be a pack of eight or a little, tiny bag of broken ones. If they could just set it aside and get it to one of our drop-off locations, that’s the biggest thing. To be able to show them there is another option for that, besides the trash,” Wrigley said.
Besides the benefits to the environment, children’s hospitals and even his own studio, the mission behind it all makes his colorful efforts even more worth it.
“When you get to see the stories of the recipients and what they’re going through — the big thing they push is they just want kids to color. It’s just a great story,” Wrigley said. ♦
