Plastic Recycling Conserves Landfill Space:  Landfills in the U.S. are becoming overwhelmingly crowded. The U.S. is looking for alternatives to landfills and trying to find places for additional landfills. Recycling is beginning to take a little bit of the burden off of the landfills and allows for plastics to be reused in making new products.  Grant County is home to Epperson Landfill and citizens have expressed concern for years about the size and smell; not to mention the fact that the local landfill is scheduled to reach capacity in less than 5 years.  

In the fall of 2016 we started working with nine 4th and 5th grade boys.  Their goal was to provide seating at the walking track at their school.  By the fall of 2017, all nine schools in the county were involved in collecting and recycling plastic into sturdy, outdoor benches.  Several local businesses and organizations are also participating.  To date we have collected over 6300 pounds of plastic lids, detergent caps and medicine bottles.  This translates into 19,054 kWh of electricity, 2,261 gallons of oil, 323 BTU’s of energy and maybe most important to our county, almost 100 cubic yards of landfill space. To visualize the amount of space saved, collected bottle lids would fill our extension greenhouse ¾ of the way full. 

 The 15 benches that have been made from the collected plastic lids are a beautiful and useful reminder to recycle, reuse and reduce.  We have 13 benches placed at the schools throughout the county and 2 at businesses.  This community effort continues to grow and help raise awareness to how easy it is to recycle and how beneficial it can be.