Four years ago, a group of students at Western Avenue Elementary School in Flossmoor came together as the Green Team. In January, the group conducted its fourth Plastic Bag Drive at the elementary school.
The fourth- and fifth-grade students know plastic film is recyclable but should not be placed in their curbside bins at home. When plastic bags and film are thrown in with normal recycling, the material gets caught in the recycling center’s machines, causing shutdown delays and possible machine damage.
Every fall season, Green Team students visit the Homewood Disposal Recycling Center to see the equipment in action and observe firsthand what happens to their garbage and recycling items after they get tossed in the bins. This inspires them to do their part in recycling the correct way, and it jump-starts discussions for their Plastic Bag Drive.
The Green Team partners with the Trex Recycling Program to host the Plastic Bag Drive every year, highlighting plastic usage and how plastic can be recycle. Green Team students challenge all families at the school to collect and store their plastic film from shopping bags, shipping boxes and packaging, and bring it to school for two weeks during the winter season.
During the two-week Plastic Bag Drive, the students weigh the plastic film collected by each classroom. That weight is converted to an equivalent number of plastic bags. (Each plastic bag weighs approximately 5.5 grams, or 0.194 ounces).
Prizes are awarded to the classroom that collects the most plastic film each week. Each week the plastic film is dropped off at local stores that partner with TREX. These bags are then shipped to TREX for recycling into decking and benches.
The first year the students set a goal of collecting 1,000 plastic bags. They smashed the goal and collected the equivalent more than 5,000 bags. The second year they doubled that amount, collecting more than 10,000 bags. The third year they collected just shy of 15,000 bags.
This year the students’ goal was to collect more than 10,000 bags to bring their total to more than 45,000 plastic bags.
This story was adapted from a piece written by Aimee Matthys, Western Parent Green Team Coordinator, originally appearing at www.mydisposal.com/recycling-part-of-early-education.