Friends Group Looking To Help Keep Waste From Landfills

On Saturday morning, members of the Friends of Mahaska County Conservation with the assistance of Fareway, collected plastic garbage bags to recycle. The program has collected hundreds of pounds of the bags.

Oskaloosa, Iowa – A group from the Friends of Mahaska County Conservation sat in the northwest corner of the Fareway parking lot in Oskaloosa on Saturday morning.

They were there to accept donations of plastic grocery bags, which they send in to be recycled.

Those bags may seem insignificant, and not a big deal in the recycling effort, but 62 grocery bags equal approximately one pound of waste in the landfill.

Rodney Anderson is with Friends of Mahaska County Conservation and spoke about the effort the group has taken up to help reduce the impact those bags make in the Mahaska County Landfill.

Fairway in Oskaloosa has teamed up with Mahaska County Conservation for the event on Saturday, and helped by providing reusable bags that help to reduce plastic use.

Saturday’s effort was the last for the year for the group, with hopes of doing six events next year.

The plan is to hold an event once a month next year from June to November, reducing the amount of plastic bags headed to the landfill.

The collected bags head to recycling, and the Friends group then orders benches made from recycled bags.

Those benches and more are sturdy and weatherproof, providing years of service to visitors to county parks.

The group doesn’t make any money from the recycling effort, but instead, they hope to complete the recycling effort by purchasing benches made of recycled plastic.

Most likely, you won’t be sitting on a plastic bag you recycled, but instead, utilizing plastic recycled by someone else.

So that 62 bags per pound has equaled 1300 pounds of bags recycled per year. A recent North Mahaska School challenge brought in 973 lbs of plastic bags to be recycled. That’s 60,326 plastic bags recycled by North Mahaska students. For the year, 80,600 plastic bags were recycled versus finding their way into the county landfill south of Oskaloosa.

The class that collected the most at North Mahaska Schools received a pizza party. The other classes also received awards.

The hope is to continue that program with more school districts.

One day, as those stockpiles of plastic bags find their way into recycling, the total amount collected could go down.

“It really has been amazing,” says Anderson to the response of recycling the plastic bags.

You can learn more about the Friends of Mahaska County Conservation at their Facebook page HERE – https://www.facebook.com/Friends-of-Mahaska-County-Conservation