By: Becky Nichols
Last night, my son Jackson came home with a flyer from school that got me totally excited. Mary R. Tisko School in Branford is participating in the Trex Plastic Film Recycling Challenge. Well, plastic bags drive me crazy and getting rid of them drives me even crazier! We use reusable bags, but somehow plastic bags still seem to show up – and then multiply like rabbits. Since we can’t put them in with our regular recycling, they form a pile that gets higher and higher in our pantry, taunting us and making us feel guilty until we pack them up and throw them in the trunk of our car, where they inevitability stay for months because we can’t seem to remember to bring them in to a participating grocery store. Ugh! And then there are the other soft plastics. I usually unwrap a bulk supply of paper towels or toilet paper and stand there with the wrappings in my hand thinking, what do I do with this? Can it go in with my towering pile of plastic bags or am I supposed to throw it out? Well, the answer is yes. It can go in with the plastic bags, as can the heavier sort of plastic wrapping like the stuff that comes around a case of water bottles.
I came in to work and talked to the other people with kids to see if their schools are also participating. Not yet, but they’re going to send the info to their PTAs to see if they’ll get on board. We’re going to collect plastic film here at Pirie and divvy it up among our kids to bring into their schools. If you have a scary pile of plastic bags at home or at work, encourage your child’s school or one of your colleagues’ children’s schools to participate. The more schools that do, the less plastic there will be in landfills or in Garbage Island.
