Plastic Bags for Garden Boxes
Help keep plastic bags out of the landfill and help out your local elementary school at the same time!
Take Pride Winnipeg! and Multi-Material Stewardship Manitoba are proud to launch the seventh annual Bag Up Manitoba Program. Since starting the program in 2008, over 4 million single-use plastic bags have been diverted from landfills, thanks to the students involved in this program.
"In 2012, over one million bags were collected, and that record was broken in 2013, with over 1.3 million bags collected by 168 schools across Manitoba," says Tom Ethans, executive director of Take Pride Winnipeg! Inc. “We hope that record will be broken once again in 2014!"
Bags collected by elementary schools across Manitoba for MMSM Bag Up Manitoba are baled and recycled, to become items such as garden boxes and park benches, made from a composite of recycled plastic and cellulose fibre. Each participating school will receive a garden box, and some schools will be eligible to win a bench for their school!
Any elementary school in Manitoba is encouraged to participate. Teachers or principals can register their school by calling the Take Pride Winnipeg! office at 204-956-7590. The school will collect and track the number of bags at their school for the month of October, which will then be transported and baled for recycling upon completion of the program.
“MMSM and businesses from the food, beverage and consumer good sectors, have committed to reduce the amount of plastic bags distributed in Manitoba by 50%. Thanks to programs like Bag Up Manitoba, we are proud to say we have achieved a 46.7% reduction so far,” says Karen Melnychuk, executive director of MMSM. “We are almost there! By educating our youth, we are reducing, re-using and recycling plastic bags and ultimately less are going to landfill”.
Take Pride Winnipeg! wishes to thank its title sponsor, Multi-Material Stewardship Manitoba, as well as sponsors BFI Canada, Gardewine Group, Trex and Canada Safeway for all their support.