Bags to Benches

IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD

FROM PLASTIC BAGS TO PARK BENCHES

Civic Organizations Contribute a Lion’s Share of Service

Story by Mackenzie Mayer | Photo by Meghan Rowe

Members of The Plains Lions Club embrace the organization’s community service mission, just like any of the club’s more than 48,000 chapters around the world.

The Lion’s Club helps seniors, youth groups, hospitals and clinics, as well as other segments of the population that might otherwise be unchecked or underfunded. And like so many other organizations worldwide, the COVID-19 pandemic forced it to cancel events and become almost dormant since March 2020.

But this chapter and its roughly 27 members are motivated with a new way to serve the community without gathering in large groups: by helping the community turn its old plastic bags into something useful for everyone: park benches.

Bill Snider, The Plains Lions Club co-membership chair, collects the bags in this bin outside his business, All American Trophies and Sport.

The group is working with a business named Trex, which uses plastics to make decking materials. The plastics receptacles are placed in two area businesses: Mac’s Work Wear on East State Street in Athens, and All American Trophies and Sports on North Plains Road in The Plains. The collection accepts any clean plastic including film, produce and store bags, Ziploc/reusable bags and bubble wrap. When Trex can collect 500 pounds of plastic, it will donate to the group a public bench made of the synthetic material.

The club’s Membership Chair Bill Omen says he’s confident the collection will glean results, which they plan to install in The Plains Community Park.

“We should probably get at least one, but 500 pounds is a lot of plastic bags. We are just glad to not have the plastic in our landfills, where it would probably stay forever,” Omen says.

Omen believes he has collected 4 or 5 pounds already just from friends and neighbors, and in February, Mac’s Work Wear had accumulated enough plastic for two benches.

“This program has seemed to be quite successful and has brought quite a bit of attention to the club. There is a lot of talk about us continuing the project after the May date,” says Bill Snider, The Plains Lions Club co-membership chair, and owner of All American Trophies.

Trex started to provide its plastic collection project to American communities in 2006. After collecting the plastic, the company shreds, melts and mixes the plastic with saw dust to create the polymer planks. Trex provides this service to any group willing to sign up for the program, which requires a six-month collection period and a monthly report. Trex reports that 500 pounds is about 40,500 plastic bags and film.

The company provides two recycling bags, posters and benches for anyone who can complete the challenge. As of now there are over 2,000 different groups that are participating in the project.

The Lions Club first announced the recycling project on its Facebook page in January and hope to continue the collection until May 15, 2021. Other nearby chapters are also in the program, including Athens, Alexander, Chauncey, Dover, Pomeroy/Middleport and the Alexander Leos, the Lions club for people under 21 years old.

Nancy Clark of the Athens Lions Club is responsible for setting up this project for each of the Lions Clubs in the area. “We can actually sign up again and have another six months so if we want to get two benches we can,” Clark says. “It’s really popular, and people are trying to get us to do it all the time.”