From Plastic to Park Bench
That's A Lot Of Bags!
This week, our tiny library reached an auspicious goal - in three months time, we managed to collect more than 1,000 pounds of plastic bags in a plastic drive that will earn us a new park bench.
Ours is a town of about 6,000 souls.
Three months.
1,000 pounds of plastic.
And not hard plastic, bottles, caps, cups or the like. Pretty much grocery bags, mulch bags, that sort of thing.
Consider for a moment how much plastic there must be in order for it to weigh 1,000 pounds.
There’s been mornings since we started the drive when we’d get to the library to open up and have to navigate literal mounds of bags of plastic bags piled on our porch, left their by patrons donating toward our cause! I had no idea people had this many bags until we started doing this.
At any rate, this will be the third bench and third year in a row that we completed the drive. One bench already site out back in Pavilion Park, while the other is used for sitting space inside our event room.
What shall we do with the third bench? We’ll keep you posted. Meantime, don’t throw away those bags. We could always use a forth park bench!
Nice! The Monadnock Coop in Keene has been collecting plastic bags and the like for a few months now, and turning them over to the folks at Trex, who turn them into composite lumber. I'm continually amazed at how much of this stuff we accumulate!
I love this! I wish I'd been more aware of your library's efforts, I could have brought over my bags, although it sounds like your patrons have it covered! I've been dropping off mine at Hannaford and Target. I know Hannaford makes outdoor furniture with the ones they receive; don't know what Target does.