Rolling out the HEB bag to trash bag recycling pro

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Rolling out the HEB bag to trash bag recycling pro

We were VERY excited to roll out this new project at our school!!!

Not only do we make money for our school, but we also keep LOTS and LOTS of bags out of LANDFILLS! 

A true win/win for our families and our Earth!!

 

This is VERY easy to sign your school up for.  Different states have different things, but in Texas, you can sign up by partnering with HEB.

Here is the link to tell you how to get set up:

http://www.heb.com/sectionpage/about-us/community/school-recycling/26501115

 

Working with the company is lovely, but please note, they ONLY take HEB bags as that is who they are partnered with.

 

First, we provided a flyer to let everyone know that this was happening at our school.

Here it is:

 

 

Once the flyer was out, we needed a place to have the bags turned into.

In order to encourage the kiddos to WANT to bring bags, as well as discourage the can to be used as a trash can, my husband had a great idea to add PVC to make it more likely they will enter just bags and not mistake it for a trash can.

I purchased a normal trash can, spray pained it red with the plastic spray paint, then used white plexiboard to create a sign. 

Here is a picture of the finished product:

 

This was placed in the main hall of the school.

Our school is not too large and this trash can was filled every 2-3 weeks, after the initial push where the flyer was first sent out.

If you are a larger school, you might have to pay closer attention to the can and empty it more often.

 

Once it was filled, I followed the specific isntructions that were provided from the company that does the recycling.

Here is a picture of the box full of bags:

 

I chose to roll ours in 50 bag increments and you are looking at approx 1400 heb bags in that picture!!!

 

The boxes that you ship the bags in our pretty large, so you will need a location to be able to store the bag as it is filled, as well as the additional 4 boxes they send you when you start the project.

 

Although we haven't received our first check yet, I am feel like this project has been extremely successful.

 

 

My advice to a school that would like to put this in place:

-Make sure to make the container look different from regular trash cans.  There is nothing worse than haivng to toss bags because they got dirty from trash.  You end up thowing away money!!

-You WILL receive TONS of plastic bags that are NOT heb, no matter how many locations you remind parents that it is just HEB bags.  It's okay. :)  Remember, you are keeping ever more plastic bags out of landfills and that is ALWAYS a good thing!!  Just bag them together and take them to your local HEB or Target.  They will be recycled and it's a good thing.

-While we did not make it a contest, this would be a good way to encourage teams of classrooms or grade levels if you wanted to implement it in that way. 

-When I would gather the full trash can, it would take between 1-2 hours to sort, count, lay out, roll up and box.  This would be for about 200-300 bags.  I got match faster the more I did it, but keep it in mind if you have a large school or lots of bags.  Might be fun to have a group do this as it would move faster and could become a party.

 

Good luck to anyone and happy recycling!!