You may have noticed the small bins located around the school asking you to drop your bottle caps in them. Perhaps you put them in thinking, “sure, why not?” Or maybe you completely ignored it and threw away your bottle. Either way, you may be wondering just what happened to all of those random caps.

Back in 2019 the Conservation Club learned that plastics smaller than a credit card are not recycled and many small bits of plastic end up in landfills, however, more often than not, they wind up on beaches and in oceans. As they searched for solutions, they found out about Green Tree Plastics, a company out of Evansville, Indiana that takes plastic bottle caps and turns them into benches for local communities. 

Sophomore Mack Harvey says the club is a great way to educate other students.

“The Conservation Club is really fun because you get to work with friends on important activities that will help the environment around our school and in Indiana”

Since launching the project in 2019, the conservation club has collected and sorted an estimated 350,000 caps, creating multiple benches around the school.

They hope to continue collecting bottle caps and lids from schools to create more benches and keep plastic out of their community.