By Matthew Burns, WWG Earth YES! student
The WWG Earth YES! class is recycling plastic bags. This year’s goal is to collect over 16,000. We have collected over 2,000 bags, and it’s been a little over 3 months. We encourage the people of Westbrook to participate in the recycling. The bags that get recycled are sorted and counted; the colored bags are separated out to make bracelets. The white translucent and clear bags will be taken to the Redwood County Recycling Center, where they will be shredded and made into new plastic bags. We have a bin outside of our high school in Westbrook, where clean bags of all shapes and sizes can be dropped off. The closest drop off point if you live in Westbrook is the Walmart in Worthington. If you live closer to Walnut Grove the closest drop off point besides us is the Walmart in Marshall. Americans use over a billion plastic bags and less than five percent are recycled. The average amount of bags per household in the U.S. is 500; now think about how many you throw away. It adds up in the long run and doesn’t help the earth. One bag takes over 1000 years to decay! We hope you can take advantage of program.
