Adams County 4-H is Going Green for Community Service! We are excited to begin a new youth driven county wide community service opportunity that you can start now, while we are staying home and staying healthy. Green Tree Plastics offers ABC Promise Partnership Program designed by a team of 8th graders over ten years ago to turn plastic bottle caps and lids into new benches, tables and other useful items. This partnership between youth and Green Tree Plastics is a great way to demonstrate how recycling can work and caring for our planet.
What we need: members to start collecting small caps from food grade containers and household items. Snap on caps from butter tubs, coffee cans, yogurt lids; small twist off caps from medicine, drink bottles, milk caps; large twist offs like detergent caps; flip tops or spouts on condiments such as ketchup or mustard caps. Remember we only want the caps, not the container itself.
Things we don’t want: any cap with metal pumps or springs such as lotion bottles, fast food drink cup lids, no cap over 8 inches in diameter and no medical supplies.
Set aside a bag, bin or box and start collecting these items. When we begin meeting again youth will sort, weigh and keep a tally of how many pounds of caps have been collected. When we have reached our goal, we will send our recycled caps to Green Tree Plastics and will turn them into a bench, picnic table, trash receptacle or other recycled plastic item. There is a cost to convert the bottle caps. Watch for opportunities to help with that as we get closer to our goal.
To “weigh in” on setting our county goal, visit the Adams County Facebook page and vote on the Going Green for Community Service poll to decide whether we aim for 200 pounds of plastic to convert to a 6 foot bench or 500 pounds of plastic to make a picnic table. Go vote now and start saving lids!
