Partners in Caring for the Environment
By Heather Merchant
A big thank you to all who participated in last Saturday’s recycling drive-through event in honor of Earth Day. The City of Bellingham reported that nearly 200 cars drove through the BCC parking lot, dropping off various items for recycling! We estimate that 20 percent of those participants were from BCC. We received many appreciative comments from community members, glad for options to responsibly dispose of items cluttering their homes. Electronic recycling and document shredding were especially popular. The city staff members were very thankful and happy to partner with BCC to offer this event to the community.
BCC’s Creation Care team offered shoe recycling and plastic film recycling. The shoes were sent to “GotSneakers,” an organization that sorts the shoes, sending those in good condition to secondary markets for distribution or resale. Worn shoes are dismantled for materials recycling. The plastic film went to Ridwell for processing and delivery to TREX, to be recycled into plastic lumber. The statistics for these items are provided below.
Shoe Recycling:
55 total cars
13 BCC cars = 24% of shoe contributors
16 bags of shoes filled
214 pairs of shoes
Plastic Film Recycling:
4 large (39 gal) black leaf bags
16 BCC family participants brought plastic film