This spring, members of McKinley Elementary School’s Roots and Shoots club created a poster campaign to raise awareness of the dangers of single-use plastic bags to the environment, and then held a plastic bag collection for the school community. The collection also served as a contest, with the grade level who collected the largest number of plastic bags receiving a prize of a reusable tote bag. McKinley’s fifth grade classes collected the most across the school.
Most importantly, however, is that Mrs. Jennifer Tanay, who leads the club, and the student members were overwhelmed by the response to the drive and the number of bags they received from all grade levels. They decided to work with management at the Giant Food Store in Rockledge, PA, to arrange a pickup of the bags in order for them to be taken to a designated site that recycles and returns them for reuse in Giant stores. On Friday, May 11, managers from Giant rolled into the parking lot at McKinley Elementary with a 54-foot tractor-trailer to haul the plastic bags away for recycling, while the students loaded the bags in the truck in an assembly-line fashion.