Students and staff of École J.B. Mitchell School were thrilled to recently receive a bench from Take Pride Winnipeg for collecting more than 15,800 plastic bags in the 2019 Bag Up Manitoba campaign.
Over 1.2 million plastic bags were collected by 168 schools across Manitoba in the 2019 MMSM Bag Up Manitoba program.
The school's ESD committee decided to participate in the annual plastic bag recycling campaign that runs during the month of October.
Students of Room 136 and the school's Global Kidizens student voice group took the lead in planning, promoting and organizing the plastic bag collection drive.
Photo courtesy of Take Pride Winnipeg
"We created special posters, made announcements in assemblies and the whole school started collecting plastic bags and putting them in bins," said Grade 5 student Mya Iwanchuk. "It is exciting to see we are recycling things so much more, now we have a new bench made up of plastic bags which otherwise would have been in landfills."
The students in all classrooms learned about the impact of plastic bags on the environment and why recycling them is important.
Room 136 teacher Breanne Yozenko said the school did intensive programming about plastic bags during the whole month. Announcements were delivered fully in French, while the bag collection drive was charted in math lessons through counting, adding and graphing.
"We also did a STEM challenge in the Science Classroom where we read a book called One Plastic Bag, about a woman in an African country who collected bags and changed them into purses. So, we did a challenge to make bracelets from plastic bags."
J.B. Mitchell's Global Kidizens group is asking students, staff and family members to vote for ideas as to where the bench should be placed on school grounds.
"The bench is a real concrete reminder of how you can give single-use grocery bags a whole new life. The location of the bench will be finalized in spring in a location where both the students and their parents can use it," said Principal Paulette Huggins. "The community and the parent council have been very supportive of the school, so we want them to access the bench too."
Grade 2 student London Szul said the bench should be placed near the 'Stop and Go' where parents drop and pick up their kids. She also thought posters could be used to remind parents to reduce, reuse and recycle plastic.
"My parents helped me in collecting bags and our family is now reusing all plastic bags instead of throwing them in garbage," she said.
The bench is made up of 23000 bags and is made here in Winnipeg by ReGen Composites. Gardewine Group, Canada Fibres and GFL Environmental supported the campaign by collecting the bags from all schools and delivering benches. All schools who participated in the campaign also got free Frisbees made from recycled plastic bags.
"We are thankful to all the school students and staff who have helped us in recycling more than twelve million bags since 2008," said Take Pride Winnipeg Executive Director Tom Ethans. "This program sponsored by Multi-Material Stewardship Manitoba helps to educate students on recycling, as well as to think about alternate, reusable options to reduce waste overall."
