Rotary Club of Waynesville

PO Box 812

Waynesville, NC 28786

www.waynesvillerotary.org

PROJECT RECYCLABLE BAGS "IN THE BAG"

Waynesville Rotarians successfully completed a months long project on Earth Day, April 22, 2008, when they distributed 1000 free recyclable bags to the Waynesville community at Ingles on Barber Boulevard. With the exceptional help of Jeff Henderson, Manager Waynesville Ingles, the 1000 bags were long gone within 3 hours of the 10:00 a.m. start time. Joining Waynesville Rotarians in the "bag giveaway" was Rotary Youth Leadershp Awardee, Jaime Geouge.

Henderson reported that individuals had been coming to the store all morning awaiting the arrival of the free bags. In addition to the free bags provided by Waynesville Rotary, Ingles sold out of their entire stock of recyclable bags. President Lynne Barrett stated, "this has been absolutely wonderful. People were eager to get the bags and had big smiles on their faces when we handed them out. It was very gratifying to see people walking out of the store with their filled Rotary bags in hand. "

Local media were plentiful in covering the story as representatives of the Waynesville Mountaineer, Asheville Citizen, and WLOS-TV were all present and covering the Earth Day Event. The project has been in the planning stages since early February of 2008. The Waynesville Rotary Board of Directors "blessed" the project and the general membership approved the funding. The project falls under the Community Service arena of the 4 Avenues of Service of Rotary.

Following are some of the scenes from the day:

PROJECT HISTORY AND PREP BELOW...

REUSABLE BAGS PROJECT UNDERWAY!

For the Waynesville Rotary Club, it’s no longer a question of paper versus plastic. “To help save resources, we want to help people start bringing their own bags,” says Dr. Lynne Barrett, President of the Waynesville Rotary Club.

The local civic group will make it easy to make the switch by giving away 1,000 re-usable shopping bags on Earth Day, Tuesday, April 22. The giveaway bags can be used – again and again – anywhere people shop.

Paper bags require trees, and plastic bags are made of petroleum products and persist in the environment. Either way, most of these bags are used just once and thrown away. A re-useable bag helps limit the amount of resources being used up in everyday shopping. “You don’t take a new car every time you go shopping, so why do you need a new bag every time?” asks Barrett.

Funds for this shopping bag program were provided by a portion of the proceeds of the club’s golf tournament, held each July. Through that event, Waynesville Rotary raises thousands of dollars each year to support a wide variety of charitable causes and special projects.

A key partner in the effort is Ingles, which provides bins to recycle used paper and plastic bags and also sells re-usable shopping bags in each of its stores. "From our annual Christmas basket program for needy families to this new re-useable shpping bag program, Jeff Henderson and the Russ Avenue Ingles have been great partners of Rotary," says Barrett.

Waynesville Middle School will also be a partner in this project and will provide a display during the bag giveaway. The WMS class will assist in distributing the bags on Earth Day in addition to their educaitonal efforts through classroom work and the giveaway display.

Each bag is made of recycled cotton and is double stitched for strength. The mocha colored bags will carry the Waynesville Rotary logo. Each bag holds an amazing amount of groceries and will surprise consumers, who choose to participate, with their carrying capacity. 2 to 3 recyclable bags can easily replace 10 - 12 plastic non-reuseable plastic bags.

(Waynesville Rotary Recyclable Bags)

Utilizing recyclable bags for shopping has many advantages in helping both the environment and reducing our national addiction to petroleum products. By reducing the number of plastic bags in use, Americans can substantially reduce the amount of petroleum used to manufacture bags. U.S. citizens currenlty utilize 100 BILLION plastic bags each year. 12 MILLION barrels of oil are required to make those 100 billion platic bags. Discarded plastic bags represent significant danger to wildlife when birds and animals become ensarned in the bags or ingest the bags as in the case with marine life.

Using the recyclable bags made of cotton waste also prevents that waste from filling our landfills. There are currently five to six billion pounds of pre-consumer cotton "table waste" from cut and sew facilities currently finding its way into landfills in the U.S. alone. Nationwide over four-million tons of post-consumer textiles enter the waste stream every year. Most go to landfills. (source: www.reusablebags.com)

Plastic bags littering our community are not difficult to find. The images on this page were all taken within an easy 30 minute ride around the Waynesville city limts. Litter bags are found in residential, recreational, and business areas of our community. The use of recyclable bags can greatly reduce this litter.

For additional information on the need to remove plastic bags from our waste stream:

Visit ReusableBags.com

Smoky Mountain News article on our project

The Reusable Bags Project is a special project of the Waynesville Rotary Club falling into the Community Service category of the Four Avenues of Service in which all Rotary clubs world wide participate. Additional information about Rotary International may be found at Rotary International.

To return to the home page of Waynesville Rotary club's website, click HERE!