The Sustainability Club is currently collecting plastic caps and lids which will be recycled into benches that will be placed in the Rainbow Raccoon Park in Millvale.
The idea of a raccoon-themed park came from kids within Millvale, where the park will be located, who were surveyed by the Millvale Community Development Corporation. The animal they chose was the raccoon, an unconventional choice, but the perfect cuddly mascot for the community park. Not only is the raccoon statue being designed by students at Shaler Area HS, but a mural was designed, voted on, and painted by students from around the district.
“This park means a new open space for children to be able to play and express themselves freely. It gives new color to an area that wasn’t too colorful before, and the idea that high school students are helping to work on it gives us a different experience that most of us have never experienced before,” senior Margarite Boggs, a member of the Sustainability Club, said.
So where do the caps and lids come in to play? Green Tree Plastics, a company located in Indiana, turns the plastic into benches. Through their ABC Promise Partnership projects, schools and organizations can apply to collect bottle caps which will be turned into a bench, or in this case, two benches.
“The hardest part is going to be traveling with (the caps/lids). The facility is located in Indiana state, so we’re going to have to drive all these caps to Indiana. From there, you can tour the factory, which I’m excited to do,” Ms. Abbey Nilson, Sustainability Club sponsor, said. “Their recycling process is basically grinding up the caps into little pieces and melting them down. It’s a gray color when they melt it down, so they’ll dye it to make a rainbow bench. Then, they mold it. It’ll end up looking like plastic lumber.”
Bottle caps that are accepted are standard caps on sodas, juices, bottles, and pill bottles stripped of their labels. To create both of the benches, 400 pounds of caps are needed, 200 for each bench.
“The impacts of bottle caps being thrown away is no different than the impacts of throwing any plastic away, it impacts the environment in such a negative way. It’s difficult and expensive to recycle plastic, especially bottle caps which typically get sent to the landfill,” Boggs said. “The process for cleaning the caps is quite simple but can be time consuming. It’s no different than washing the dishes. Since they are small it does take some time to clean them, but while we clean the caps, we also sort them to make sure it’s the right type of plastic.”
Nilson hopes to find an easier, more time effective way to wash the caps. One such way would be running them through the dishwasher in mesh bags. For now, though, they will continue cleaning them by hand, which is one of the main reasons they haven’t taken all the opportunities they can to promote the drive.
The hope is that the park will be completed at the end of April, so make sure to donate your bottle caps. Currently, the project has a call for artists to continue designing the park. If interested, check out their website for more info — https://www.millvalecdc.org/current-projects/rainbow-raccoon-park
“I hope that the park is well loved by the community and that it will bring children outdoors as well as learn a little about sustainability. There are plenty of eco features around the park, so we hope it sparks some interest in them,” Boggs said.
