The words “Don’t Be Trashy, Recycle” have been traveling the roads of the Northeast this month plastered on the side of an RV. It’s an effort to raise awareness of America Recycles Day this weekend.The bright green RV recently set up shop outside the Berkshire Museum in downtown Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Hoards of children stopped by to see what the whole thing was about.
The first thing the kids see mounted on the wall is a water-filled tube with different pieces of plastic floating on each end. Each had a chance to give it a spin.
Jennifer Killinger of the Plastics Make It Possible campaign explains that plastics such as yogurt cups and bottle caps float to the top while the remaining plastics sink to the bottom.
“That’s actually how real recyclers separate the two types of plastics,” Killinger said. “They shred them and put them in water. One floats and one sinks.”
The next step in the interactive process is a mock-up of a heated spinning coil, a process called extrusion, as described by Eddie Flores.
“This heated coil heats all those flakes and makes them into a gooey-plastic soup,” Flores described. “The plastic-goo is pushed through small openings that make long, long strands. Those long strands are chopped into plastic pellets.”
After feeling recycled and chopped up plastic, the children can test their knowledge of which items go in what receptacle, as explained by Killinger.
“You guys get to go through and decided which items can be recycled, which items like food and vegetables would get composted and if you can’t compost it and you can’t recycle it, what happens?” Killinger said. “Do you throw it in the trash? Yeah. So there’s your compost bin, there’s your recycling bin and there’s your trash bin.”
And some kids wasted no time at all.
Seven-year-old John Cook says he learned about composting in first grade.
“We recycle glass, we recycle plastic, sometimes paper,” said Cook.
But, his 6-year-old sister Jaelynne says she and her brother let the elders in the household handle the recycling.
“Mostly our Mom and Dad does it most of the time,” said Jaelynne Cook.
But they might be pitching in sooner than you think, because they both say they plan to recycle when they grow up.
“So we can reuse things,” said John.
“Yeah and make them into different things!” Jaelynne chimed in.
At the end of the recycling run-through, the kids get T-shirts made from recycled plastic bottles. Killinger says children aren’t the only ones interested in the mobile RV.
“Adults come to us with questions,” Killinger said. “They want to know what can be recycled. A couple of the key things there is that it’s always good to remind people that today recyclers actually want us to keep the caps on our shampoo bottles, beverage bottles and food containers. The other thing is that we’re all pretty familiar with the things that we can put in the curbside bin, but a lot of the softer plastics, things like grocery bags, sandwich bags and bags from bread and produce can go back to grocery stores to be recycled.”
The RV team heads to New York City for America Recycles Day Saturday. It will make stops at the Philadelphia Marathon, collegiate tailgates and various towns for the rest of November.
