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Peacock students have hands full with bag challenge

Students at A.E. Peacock have already collected more than 20,000 single-use plastic bags to recycle them as part of national environmental challenge.

One of the longstanding mantras of the environmental movement is to think globally and act locally.

A.E. Peacock Collegiate has taken that to heart. And then some.

Stephen Lys’ Environmental Science 20 decided to take part in the national Plastic Bag Grab challenge which has collected 52 metric tonnes of single-use plastic bags for recycling in the past three years. The schools that take part in the challenge have until the end of April to collect plastic bags before taking them to be recycled. Since China has stopped accepting plastic bags to be recycled, the bags will be sent to the Trex Company who will turn them into composite decking and furniture.

“Doing something like this kind of empowers them and shows them how easy it is to do stuff as an individual and how easy it is on a local level to affect change,” Lys said. “It seemed like a fun thing and it’s kind of spiraled into kind of an overwhelming, teachable moment.”

Environmental issues can feel large and hard to tackle, but looking at the wall of plastic bags that line Lys’ classroom is a constant reminder for his students that they can make an impact as individuals.

“This is just air,” he said gesturing at the wall of plastic bags. “These would all end up in the landfill if we hadn’t intervened.”

The school set a goal of trying to collect one plastic bag for every person in Moose Jaw. As of Thursday they had already surpassed 20,000 bags collected.

“It’s good to see that everyone is pulling together to get all of these bags in our school and it’s going to a good cause,” said Burke Anderson, a Grade 12 student in Lys’ Environmental Science 20 class.

Three of the classes have taken on the project and run with it. There is a running tally board at the office with the total of each classes’ bags collected and the grand total. Understandably Mr. Lys’ class is right near the top, but the Grade 9 fourth period gym classes – taught by spouses Renee Verge and Blake Buettner – are engaged in an old-fashioned battle of the sexes to see who can collect the most bags. The three classes are running away with the internal contest within the school.

“We were expecting maybe 5,000 bags in the beginning,” Anderson said. “With how competitive Ms. Verge and Mr. Buettner are, you never know what extremes they can go to.

“I don’t know how these kids are getting most of theirs. They’re Grade 9s, they don’t even have their licenses, so I don’t know where they’re getting them.”

The boys’ gym class had canvassed the neighbourhood around the school and went door-to-door collecting Thursday afternoon to follow-up.

Taylor Hicke from the Environmental Science 20 class made a post on the Facebook group MJ Talks that yielded 1,400 bags in one day.

Lys thought that the steady stream of bags might slow as their efforts hit their second week. Instead, they seem to be building momentum.

More than one billion plastic bags are handed out in Canada every year and they can all be recycled. Yet, only 1-3 per cent of all plastic bags in Canada end up getting recycled.

Plastic bags are banned in 61 countries, including France and Italy, and many cities have also banned bags in their municipalities. Both Victoria and Montreal have banned plastic bags, as have Boston, Seattle and San Francisco.

“It would be nice to have a bag ban in Moose Jaw. It’s coming. It would be nice on the ground floor and ahead of things,” Lys said. “It should be easy for us to do it. If they have to, people will adapt.”

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