 Recycling
ambition works for youth
Katie Curry, a third grader from Franklin, Indiana
wanted to help buy her town new benches because the old ones were
falling apart.
Amy Grimmer, Director of Johnson County Solid
Waste District, helped Katie apply for a grant from the Indiana
Office of Energy and Defense Development. A grant of $3,500 was
awarded to help buy 10 new benches made with recycled content. Katie
decided to make one bench from recycled bottles collected by students
at her school to show them that their efforts counted.
Katie organized the collection of 80 bags of No.
1 and No. 2 recyclable plastics using ClearStream Recyclers. With
the help of her grandmother, Alice Curry, a member of the Franklin
Beautification Committee, Katie not only set up ClearStreams at
her church and school, but also at two other schools and a hospital.
Katie and Alice transported all the units and set them up.
At the May 2006 Indiana Recycling Coalition Conference,
Brent and Bonnie Grafton, of Green Tree Plastics, took note of Katie’s
collection efforts and offered to make Katie’s bottles into
a bench or benches for free despite the cost and despite the fact
that the grant money had already gone to buy benches from someone
else. “I’m going to let her see her bottles turned into
benches right in front of her eyes”, Grafton said.
In July, Katie traveled with her fans and 80 bags
of bottles to the Green Tree Plastics plant, in Evansville, Indiana,
to see her bottles made into a bench. The bench will be presented
in the fall to the students at her school to remind them how recycling
works and to thank them for helping to close the loop.
ClearStream Recyclers are manufactured by Resourceful
Bag & Tag, Inc. For more information about Resourceful Bag &
Tag, Inc. or its ClearStream. products, visit www.bagandtag.com
or www.clearstreamrecycler.com. |
