Welcome to women volunteers, a GFWC-NC podcast where we talk with women across North Carolina, who volunteer their time in support of community improvement. We'll find out how they got started, how they manage these projects and the impact of their volunteer actions.
Welcome, everyone. I am excited, I have two guests here with me today, joining in from the Outer Banks via Zoom to talk about a neat plastic recycling project. I have Jo Williams and Janet Barker. Jo is a member of the Outer Banks Woman's Club, as is Janet and they co-chair the Environment Committee. Now Jo has been a Club member for three years and she is a widow with four stepchildren and two stepgrandchildren. And she was a legal assistant for more than 30 years and happily retired three years ago and move to the Outer Banks. Janet Barker is as I said earlier, is a member of the Outer Banks Woman's Club and co chair of the Environment Committee, and she's been a Club member here for one year and four years previously in Smithfield, Virginia. She's married with two children and four grandchildren, and retired as a risk manager with Newport News Shipbuilding after 33 years. After retirement, she was able to focus on her dream job as a fitness instructor and personal trainer, and enjoys giving back to her community through volunteering. Welcome, ladies. Thanks for having us. So, tell us a little bit about this project that you have been leading.
We did this project in Smithfield, Virginia at the Smithfield Women's Club. And it took a little different turn there. The ladies collected the bags at the meetings, we also had collection bins at the library, Chamber of Commerce and the YMCA. We would collect our bags and then take them to public works. They were our community partner on this effort. And from there, they weigh them, they send them to Trex. And once we were able to give 500 pounds of plastic to public works, they sent it to Trex and Trex in turn sent us a bench. And...
Okay, so let me ask you a question. So Trex is the company that recycles plastic into benches, right?
Right benches, and then all those wonderful materials that people are now putting on their decks.
Okay. All right, right. So you when you did this at Smithfield you could do was it any kind of plastic?
We concentrated on plastic bags.
Okay. All right.
And also plastic around plastic bottles and things like that. But we primarily use grocery bags.
Okay. And so you've brought that project to the club here, you guys figured out that this was something you wanted to do?
Yes, it was, it proved to be a wonderful project there. And once we got the benches, we donated them to the town.
So nice
...in the name of the Women's Club and public works. So here it's taken a little bit of a turn, we don't have public works as a community partner. So there's a lot more effort on the part of the Women's Club but the community has stepped up beautifully. And we do have collection bins, again at the Y at the Rec Center and at a local realty company. But Jo has done an amazing job getting the word out and marketing this project on Facebook, through the churches, and even through the local paper. And people have been contacting us to participate. They love the project. We've gotten people locally businesses that are saving their plastic for us, and even out-of-state people that have seen it on Facebook and have contacted us. And one of the most interesting groups there, which I just love. This is a group of Green Teams RVA out of Richmond they are working on a plastic project to make bags for the homeless and the scraps from their plastic they're saving for us.
That's awesome
I know that's just such a great community effort there and even you know state to state.
So Jo um, Janet mentioned about you doing some marketing with Facebook and churches in the paper. What did you do specifically,
I contacted all the area churches got their contact information and mostly sent emails to all of them. I contacted the Chamber of Commerce and we had them do a blast email out to their 3,000 members. I also contacted the Outer Banks Association of Realtors, and they sent out an email to their property management council, and my local community where I have I live in a condo association. And I got permission from our HOA to set a bin in front of my condo for anyone to drop off plastic bags. And we have signs posted at our dumpsters that they can drop them off at our bin. It's also in our, our newsletter for our community. I contacted the Island Free Press and Outer Banks Voice. It I have heard that it has been on some of our local radio stations. I didn't have anything to do with that, but it got picked up somehow.
That's always nice at a station.
So free advertisement is great. And then we post a update on our Facebook page. And I share that post with about 50 other local Facebook pages.
Oh, wow.
We we've gotten the word out. And we can tell that over 22,000 people have seen our posts that we have put on Facebook.
That's a lot of posts.
Yeah.
A lot of viewers right.
Yeah. So it has really reached a lot of people in our community.
So how many bags have you collected so far?
We're currently just past 400 pounds. So we have through November, and we need about 95 more pounds.
And when did you start this?
We started it June 1, we have six months to collect the bags. And about just to give you an idea of the quantity about 500 pounds of plastic is equivalent to about 38,000 bags.
Holy cow.That's a lot of plastic bags.
And that's a lot of plastic bags that are not going in the landfills in the oceans. That's all right.
Yeah. So when I think of like plastic bags, it's hard for me to think of size. Alright, so a 500 pounds of plastic bags. What kind of space does that occupy? Do? You know?
We don't really know because once we collect them, we we take them to the local Harris Teeter who is our partner on this. They send them to Trex and we try and be mindful not to overload them.
Okay, so you guys don't have like hundreds of pounds a plastic bag sitting in your dining room waiting to go to Trex right
Definitely not .
So you collect these. Okay, here's theaters got a spot for that. So you basically collect bags and then take them to Harris Teeter.
Right?
Yes, we do this a couple of times a week, we go out and pick up. We pick up from our receptacles because they're filling up a couple of times a week that we go to the receptacles we pick them up, we weigh them at Publix, and then we drop them off at Harris Teeter.
That's cool. So can you do that at any Harris Teeter? Do you have to like work out in agreement with them to do it at a specific one.
We we tell Trex which Harris Teeter we're working with.
Okay. So you reach out to Trex and work out this plan. Can anyone do that?
I believe so.
Okay. And then they tell you different places that you can drop things off if you don't have a public works that works with them like you did in Smithfield. Right?
Correct. They gave us a list of their participating dealers. And it's normally grocery stores, Lowe's, Home Depot, that type of business.
So that's something that probably has a lot of locations that anyone could do something like this, right?
Yes, absolutely. And they strongly encourage it. We have to submit monthly a total of where we are.
Okay, so you do you weigh it, or does Harris Teeter weight it?
We weigh it?
Okay.
We weigh it before it's dropped off. And then I collect the weights and submit it monthly to Trex.
So do you is a large portion of your club participating in this?
Oh, yes, I think so. Yeah.
So do you do any like you know, if I remember correctly, I hope I am. Y'all have a great beach cleanup project that you do, right?
We do. In fact, we just partnered with Surfrider OBX, they do beach access adoptions. And so we have adopted the Kill Devil Hills life-saving station as our public beach access for the next two years. We are committed to clean that at least six times a year. We plan to do more than that, but we do at least six times a year. So we just started that with them. There's actually a sign that they are putting up at the beach access that says the Outer Banks Women's Club is in charge of keeping this access clean. We have to do a actual tally of everything that we pick up there every cigarette butt we have to number everything,
Wow
I have app, there's actually an app that we can use as we're cleaning we can put in as we're picking up everything that we're doing. So it makes it a little easier.
So do you do can you take the plastic that you pick up there and put it towards your bench?
No, unfortunately, the plastic that goes toward the bench has to be clean, and everything we pick up is trash.
Yep. Okay, that's interesting. I wonder why that is?
I guess because of their processing machinery. They don't want a gummed up with food residue or Yeah.
Okay. All right. So, um, do you guys have plans for your bench?
That's exciting. There are so many opportunities for that bench, that that's going to take some kind of a meeting of the minds from the club. There's a lot of history here in so many areas between the Woman's Club and the community. So we want to try and match that.
Wow. See, you haven't yet decided, Okay, that'll be cool. So, you know, if another club wanted to start doing something like this, how would they get started? How would they reach out to Trex?
Trex has a specific contact for this project, Stephanie Hicks, and she handles all of these type projects. So they they start with an email to Stephanie.
Okay
And her website is Trex.com And the website's wonderful as far as the information someone would need to get started.
So Stephanie's email on that Trex.com site?
It is it's also Stephanie Hicks@trex.com.
Okay. All right.
Do you know is that S-t-e-p-h-a-n-i-e?
Yes.
H-i-c-k-s?
Yes it is. .
Okay, awesome. So Stephanie Hicks@treks.com. And we might want to give her a heads up, right?
Oh, yes.
Before we before we share this information out with the world. Right?
Right.
So how do you how do you how did you organize getting this all together? Because obviously, it was very different from where you did it before it had some significant differences, right? What was your approach to getting this club moving on it? And how did you divide and conquer to get everything done?
We started in our committee.
Okay
And we have about eight or nine in our committee. And we thought that we may be able to handle it the same way we handled it in Smithfield by contacting public works, but that didn't work out. And then we just started going down a lot of different options.
Okay.
And where do we get it weighed? Where do we collect it? Who partners with us? Is it going to be Home Depot, Lowe's, Harris Teeter, so different members of our committee contacted different members in the community, to feel them out and see what their interest was? What kind of support they could offer? And it was not an easy, that was the hardest part, Kelly, really, that was the hardest part. Once we got everything in place. It's simple. But that was the hardest part.
So how much time do you think it would take for a new group to do that part with their committee? Is this a one or two month kind of, you know, lead and planning timeframe?
At least? You know, the best laid plan, that old saying, it sounds like it should be so simple, but you just don't realize the possible problems till you or or not problems really, but challenges till you get into it.
Right. So you have to weigh them. So, yeah, how do you weigh them? What kind of scale is required.
That caused us some of the largest challenges that we faced was how do you weigh the plastic? So we started with public works, and they had a scale that was available, but it really was only available for really large weights and then we contacted the grocery stores and some of them would rather us not bring our bags in on their produce scales. They didn't have big scales in the back, which I thought they would have. What they were offering was their produce scales. But Publix actually said, Yeah, that's fine, you all are welcome to come in and use our scales in the produce department. So we did that for a while. But then we found it was much easier just to bring them home, step on the scales, weigh yourself, step on the scales with the bags. Subtract the difference.
Should you combine this with a wellness committee activity?
And so that's what most of us are doing now.
Okay, you could use a kitchen scale, though. Right? If you had one.
Yes.
Okay. Or I think they make you know that if your suitcase weigh more than 50 pounds back when people used to travel all the time, right? Right. One of those scales where you can hold it, it pulls down on it, but I like the quick, easy, get on your own scale with the bags get on your scale without them.
That's much easier. And then it was a matter of which which grocery store seemed most excited about partnering with us. And Harris Teeter was amazing. They're they're very active in the community and have a lot of projects. They already have a relationship with Trex, and they already recycle. They're very big into that. So it was just perfect. Once we got those two things in place. It was It was not hard at all.
So how did you come up with collection bins? Did you buy those? How are your bins set up or did different people
Trex, furnishes three,
Oh! Trex furnishes bins for you. Okay.
Oh, they love this project.
Okay. Awesome. Now, is that what you have outside your condo?
No, I just have like a tote, just a clear storage tote outside mine. Because I don't really have a lot of space for that.
Okay. But in some HOAs is will regulate branding of things, too. I imagined Trex
Yeah
Something about Trex on it.
The big receptacles that trucks has given us are like a large, like a hard plastic. So they have to be inside whatever facility that we've decided to put them in. So okay, that took a lot of phone calls, to get partners that would allow us to do that. But we ended up with one at the YMCA at the bomb Center, which is our senior center, and one of the local realtor companies.
Well, that's really cool. This is an exciting project. I think there's some real opportunity for some, some other clubs to to take that on.
Absolutely.
Now, do you does your committee. I know you do the beach cleanup. Are there other priorities that you have going on at the same time you're doing this? Or is this kind of a big focus right now.
We're doing some other collections along with these, these two projects we are collecting gently used shoes and handbags for Soles for Souls. They send the shoes to third world countries. And they do auctions for the handbags and put that money back into their organization.
Mmmm that's pretty cool.
We also are collecting bottle corks. And we are recycling those with a local business woman who recycles those into jewelry and sells them at her local shop.
That's really cool. We have another episode about cork recycling.
Oh, good.
And it's with the Greensborough Woman's Club. And they have recycled 637 pounds of wine corks. And to put that in perspective, it's 100 corks per pound.
Wow.
Yeah. When I was talking with them, I'm like, I take it this took more than a year. But there's some great, great projects. And that's you know, what we're really hoping to do here is inspire people who just as an individual might want to try doing something themselves. And the other is to inspire clubs that might want to take on a project, if they're looking for some ideas, they want to see something that's effective, and that we can all kind of come together with. You know, I think that sounds super easy. I might, you know, bring this to my club, to see if it's something that we can take on because we have a small membership in my club. And you know, we also all work a lot some of us have more than one job. Some are college professors in addition to a day job. So that's how...Sounds like something that we could probably manage you say you pick up twice a week, maybe from your locations.
Yeah, we have already decided that. It looks like we're going to meet our goal of 500 pounds before our deadline. And we have already decided that we're gonna go for a second bench. We're just going to keep collecting.
That's Awesome
We've got the community all enthused and dropping off so much. We're gonna keep going.
I like the idea. Well, thank you both. This has been super helpful. And I appreciate, you know, the opportunity to learn about it. And thank you so much for joining me via Zoom today, so that we could meet without all of the driving, right?
Yes. Thank you for having us.
Yes, thank you. I hope that we can share this with other clubs and make a difference.
Absolutely. Thank you. Women volunteers is a podcast by Kelly Paul for GFWC-NC. If you're interested in learning more about the General Federation of Women's Clubs of North Carolina, and how you can join these amazing women in improving our communities, please visit us on the web at GFWCNC.org
