in focus

Purposeful Plastic

Westerville Lions Club project turns recycled plastic into benches

Members of the Westerville community are coming together to make it easy to recycle while also giving back to the community. A collaboration between the Westerville Lions Club, Green Haven Living and Trex Company has recycled thousands of pounds of plastic. And it comes back to the city – benches made of recycled materials are then given to Westerville.

Jane Enneking, who joined the Lions Club to honor her father, started the recycling program in May 2021. She says she’s always had an interest in recycling and reducing waste. This project targets waste not commonly recyclable at home, such as plastic bags.

The project sprung into fruition quickly due to the support of the Westerville community. Enneking says connections at Trex, a Virginia-based company that creates products from recycled materials, helped her get the project started.

“(The people at Trex) are very supportive,” she says. “They usually respond within a day of any emails, answer all of our questions, (provide) videos about how everything in the project works. It’s been a good relationship with them.”

While coordinating with businesses to set up drop-off locations across the city, Enneking met Angie Scheu, owner of Westerville business Green Haven Living.

The program made clear connections to the values of the sustainable home and gift store.

“I’m a lifelong environmentalist,” Scheu says. “It just seemed like kind of a perfect program for us to do together.”

Scheu says her passion for helping the environment inspired her to start Green Haven and also fueled her involvement with the recycling project.

Green Haven Living’s contributions are integral to the success of the project, Enneking says. In addition to providing a drop-off location, Green Haven’s staff takes the plastic to the Trex locations as well.

While Green Haven, located at 20 W. Main St., is the main drop-off site, there are other collection sites throughout the community, including one at Uptown Westerville’s Saturday Farmers Market during the summer months and one at Mount Carmel Rehabilitation Hospital.

Angie Scheu, owner of Green Haven Living

Specific types of plastic can be placed in the collection bins. Enneking says plastic shopping bags, plastic wrap and other resealable food bags are all accepted. Other common items include plastic cereal box liners, bread bags, bubble wrap and ecommerce mailers. All donations must be clean and dry.

Once the plastic is collected, the Lions Club weighs it and takes it to a Trex collection site. Once 500 pounds of plastic is collected during a six-month time frame, Trex will then donate a composite bench to the Lions Club. The community’s recycling has earned four benches for Westerville within its first two recycling periods, with one bench placed in front of Green Haven to honor the business’ contributions to the project.

The community support is vital to the project as well, though, and has helped to far surpass the collaboration’s original goals.

“The response was actually way more than any of us imagined it would be,” Scheu says. “It’s so refreshing to see the response we’ve had so far.”

The program has been so successful that Scheu says she’s even fielded calls from people out of state wanting to implement a program of their own. In Westerville, it’s an ongoing project. The Lions Club and Green Haven hope to see community contributions earning as many as 10 benches by the end of the year.

“I would just encourage people to continue to bring their plastic our way,” Scheu says. “It contributes to a goal and it’s actually a beneficial program for Uptown.”

Kate Anderson is an editorial assistant at CityScene Media Group. Feedback welcome at feedback@cityscenemediagroup.com.

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