Local Elementary Students Create Green Team
Western Avenue Elementary School in Flossmoor, Illinois has gathered together a special team of students. The students call themselves the “Green Team”, and they are entering their fourth year of conducting a Plastic Bag Drive at their elementary school. The fourth and fifth grade students know that plastic film is recyclable, but not in their curbside bins at home. The plastic gets caught in the recycling center’s machines and causes machine shut down delays and possible machine damage. Each fall Green Team students visit the Homewood Disposal Recycling Center to see the equipment in action and get first hand experience of 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 jump starts discussions for their plastic bag drive.
How Do They Collect So Many Bags?
The Green Team partners with the Trex Recycling Program to host a drive each year to highlight plastic use and how to recycle it. 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. During the two week drive the students weigh all of 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, 0.194 oz). 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 Big Results
The first year the students set a goal of collecting 1,000 plastic bags. They smashed the goal and collected the equivalent over 5,000 bags. The second year they doubled that amount, collecting over 10,000 bags. The third year they collected just shy of 15,000 bags.
This year the students have the goal to collect over 10,000 bags to bring their total to over 45,000 plastic bags. If they reach this goal they have challenged the school and the school’s Parent Teacher Organization to purchase a TREX recycled plastic bench for their school garden. It takes the equivalent of about 45,000 plastic bags for TREX to create a recycled plastic bench. Having a recycled bench in the garden would celebrate the recycling efforts of all families at Western Avenue Elementary School.
Aimee Matthys
Western Parent Green Team Coordinator
Tour the Recycling Facility
Learn the Basics of Recycling
see more recycling activities
