It started with trash talk and LEGO building blocks.

It ended with Mack Benn Jr. Elementary School’s 10-member robotics team devising a mock school-recycling program and building a robot out of LEGOs to demonstrate their recycling and composting plan.

On Nov. 21, the team competed in the First LEGO League’s regional competition at Norview High School in Norfolk. The team — four fourth-graders and six fifth-graders — was the only elementary school from Suffolk to compete.

First LEGO League issued all competing schools the same challenge: Trash Trek, ranging from collection, sorting, smart production and reuse of trash. All schools used the same LEGO robotic kits, said Megan Farabaugh, gifted education coordinator at Mack Benn.

Teams were on their own to identify and research the problem, devise a plan of attack and build a robot to demonstrate the process, she said.

The students started with interviewing janitors, finally determining that Mack Benn produces 21,800 bags of trash annually. That averages out to each student producing a half-pound of trash per day, said fifth-grader Arlisha Boston.

“We wanted a real-life problem,” she said. The team’s proposed solution included implementing a composting system for cafeteria leftovers to create soil for the school garden and starting a classroom recycling system.

The students operated their robot remotely, sending it scooting across the table picking up plastic bags and dumping loads of mock trash into a LEGO composter.

Building and programming the robot required students to put their math and science skills to the test, Farabaugh said.

“There was a lot of trial and error,” said fifth-grader Kiyah Stokes. “A lot.”

Tayloe Brooks, club sponsor, said the kids worked through their lunch hours and after school twice a week in the days leading up to the contest.

Just two weeks before the contest, McAllister Towing of Virginia donated a new, updated LEGO robotics kit to the school, Brooks said. The team put in extra hours to build and learn how to use the new robot, she added.