A Lakeland High School senior has won a contest to design the paint schemes on recycling cans at Lake Meade Park.

The Suffolk Clean Community Commission is establishing recycling at the park behind the Farm Fresh on North Main Street with a grant from Keep Virginia Beautiful.

Commission members voted on four entrants in the contest. The winner was Tori Rountree’s design featuring planet Earth, sprouting a leaf, cradled in a pair of hands, all surrounded by the recycling symbol.

Rountree, who took art as a freshman and has returned to the subject as a senior, said her art teacher, Annette Lowe, encouraged her to enter the contest.

“You couldn’t use words — you had to show recycling through pictures,” Rountree said of the contest parameters.

She said the leaf represents “all the things on the Earth that can be recycled.”

“When you think of recycling, you think of the three arrows; so I put that around the Earth,” she said.

Rountree said she first sketched her design on paper, before laying her paints on the can.

The teen said she was surprised she was voted the winner. “I was really happy,” she said.

“I honestly didn’t think I would win.”

She’s a firm supporter of recycling. “I think recycling is good, because we need to prepare for other generations,” she said. “Usually, people are focused on the here and now.”

Rountree believes her design will attract attention and encourage folks to deposit recyclable items for an investment in the future.

“People will see the can and say, ‘Oh, what’s that about?’” she said. “I feel like it makes an impression.”

Rountree plans to study graphic design at Virginia Commonwealth University.