TREX - Plastic Sheeting Drive

Our club has an exciting opportunity to do something great for the environment during April, the month we celebrate Earth Day!

You know all those plastic grocery bags, plastic wrap around cases of water, top ramen packaging, bread bags, cereal box liner bags, baggies, dry cleaning bags? Well, the deck building company TREX takes those plastic sheeting recyclables and turns them into the material they use to build decks! So for the month of April, we will be asking our club members to save those plastics and we will collect them to donate for TREX use!

Our local King Soopers stores have partnered with TREX to allow us to donate the plastic sheeting to their stores - you've probably seen the box where you can recycle plastic shopping bags. Well, they will take ALL plastic sheeting free of food. The list of acceptable plastic sheeting can be found on the TREX website. We are tracking the weight of all of our plastic recyclables throughout the month of April, so if you are so kind as to donate your plastic sheeting to King Soopers, please email Samantha with the weight of your donation. Luggage scales can be used if you own one or you can weigh yourself then weigh yourself again holding the plastics donation to get the weight of your donation!

Thank you for participating in this environmental project and keeping less plastic from our oceans and landfills.

Some facts worth knowing: 

• Plastic materials can take 100's of  years to decompose.
• 3.13 million tons of plastic were discarded in the U.S. in 2018
• Almost 8 million metric tons of plastic end up in the world's oceans annually.
• There were 1.9 million grocery bags and other plastics bags collected in the 2019 International Coastal Cleanup.
• The plastic waste that is thrown into seas every year can kill as many as 1 million sea creatures.
• Over time, plastic breaks down into tiny particles called microplastics, which are found on shorelines around the world.
• According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish by 2050.
• An article published in the journal Plos One estimates that 5 trillion pieces of plastic, weighing more than 250,000 metric tons, are afloat in oceans.
• There were 359 million tons of plastics produced worldwide in 2018

Our club is doing this for the month of April but if your organization is interested in making this a year round project, there is information available on Recycling Programs | Trex  about their community recycling challenges!