The Rotary Club of Buckhannon-Upshur has nearly collected enough plastic during its “Recycle Beyond the Bag” program to receive a bench made of recycled materials.
“Recycle Beyond the Bag” is an initiative launched in August that has Rotary Club members and other volunteers collecting a variety of soft plastics that can’t usually be placed in curbside recycling bins. Accepted items include plastic shopping bags, bread bags, produce bags, pantry ice bags, Ziploc and other reclosable storage bags, cereal box liners, case overwrap from products like bottled water and paper towels, plastic e-commerce mailers, bubble wrap, dry-cleaning bags and newspaper sleeves.
Once the club collects enough plastic, it receives a donated bench made of recycled materials. Rotary member Tina Cunningham updated the club on the program’s progress.
“We’re almost to our first bench; we have about 500 pounds of plastic collected so far,” Cunningham said at the Oct. 21 meeting. “The plastic that we’re collecting for the bench is at the Parish House, Coldwell Banker, Kelley Tierney State Farm and Mountain CAP. All of that plastic is being dropped off at Coldwell Banker, and we’re using that to get the benchn. St. Joseph’s Hospital and America’s Mattress are also donating plastic.”
Collection bins are available at Coldwell Banker Armstrong Davis Realty, located at 56 South Kanawha Street, and Kelley Tierney State Farm Insurance, located at 115 East Main Street in Buckhannon, where donations can be dropped off anytime. Rotary Club members will also accept plastics during their regular meetings at noon on the first and third Tuesdays of each month at Chapel Hill United Methodist Church in Buckhannon.
“I spoke at the city council meeting, and then we spoke with the waste department, and they both agreed to work with us on the recycling project to run the baler, so the City of Buckhannon will run a baler at the waste department, and the waste department will have a man there to operate it and perform the collection,” Cunningham said. “Eventually, people will just drive to the recycling center, and there’ll be a bin there, and you put your soft plastic in it.”
The club also received a donation and purchased another baler to house at Weyerhaeuser because the company produces so much plastic on its own.
“They’re going to start baling their own plastic and putting it on pallets, and then they have a little storage area, so it’ll stay dry,” Cunningham said. “Then Grass Roots, who we partnered with, will bring in a tractor-trailer when we’re ready for pickup, and they’ll pick it up.”
Currently, Rotary is working on a grant to purchase another baler for the city transfer station.
“That baler costs $12,000-plus. I wrote a grant to the Giving Fund, which is through Weyerhaeuser. We don’t know how much money we’re getting yet, but I’m under the assumption it’s the full dollar amount,” Cunningham said.
Going forward, the club plans to collect the plastic and raise funds for other projects instead of more benches.
“We don’t want people just showing up at Weyerhaeuser dropping off plastic — just the one at the City of Buckhannon. We will likely no longer do the benches because of the work entailed, so we are going to get the money and buy inclusive playground equipment with it,” Cunningham said. “I just priced it, and it’s around $120,000 that we would need to build a complete playground.”
The club collects 14 cents a pound and brings in about $110 to $120 per bale of plastic. City Recorder Randy Sanders said the city was excited to offer a service so people could recycle more materials at the transfer station.
“We’re here to talk about the waste collection department today. It is one of those departments of the city that has a high volume of traffic; they have an influx of customers on a daily basis, plus all the trucks that are traveling on the roads and routes, not only throughout Buckhannon, but throughout much of Upshur County, collecting waste and bringing it back in,” Sanders said. “We also have a recycling department at the transfer station that handles the recycling that we could process, which did not include soft plastic. That’s why this was a perfect fit for what we do.”
The club and the city currently hope to place the new playground equipment at the North Buckhannon Riverfront Park.
The Rotary Club of B-U also encouraged the community to check out its new website at https://burotary.org/. The website features information about blood screenings and applications for grant awards.
