Plastic for Benches

Why does Happyville Farm need benches?

Because our farm cares about the whole community, and many in the community need to be able to sit when they're tired, or pace themselves as they walk and work around the farm. That includes seniors and people with disabilities and parents toting little kids. The rule of thumb is, at least 1 seating location per every 50 to 100 feet of walk. So a one-acre farm needs a lot of these!

We collect stretchy soft "plastic bags and film" for the TREX recycling challenge ... and every 500 lb, we win a bench for the farm! These are top of the line outdoor benches and TREX sends us one free every time our community of supporters turns in another 500 lb within 6 months. It's a lot of plastic for sure - if it were all plastic grocery bags, it would be 40,000 of them!

Here is the TREX challenge web page where you can see more about how it works:

As a community organization we can win one every 6 months... so long as we keep it up. With people like you helping, we can make the farm friendlier for everybody!

Here's three easy ways to help! Gather up your CLEAN, DRY stretchy/flexible plastic bags and film. Turn them in and report them in one of these ways, whatever works easiest for you:

(A) drop it in the bin at the front of the store in Albertson's, Fred Meyer, Target or Kohl's (the participating local stores) and comment here with the weight. A stuffed-full grocery store bag is about 1 lb.

(B) Bring your bag of plastic to the farm on S. Saturn. We're there Tuesday - Friday during the growing season until about 11 or 12 each morning.

(C) Or contact us about how you can turn in very large amounts directly!

The "plastic bags/film" category of polyethylene recyclable can include: softener salt bags, ice bags, pellet bags, case wrap, pallet wrap, plastic bags from electronics packaging, plastic amazon-type shipping bags, bubble wrap, zip-locks (no gooey stuff inside please!), plastic wrap off of paper products (like napkins, paper plates, TP, etc), dry-cleaning bags, most department store bags, cereal box liner bags, produce bags off the roll in the store (NOT the crunchy/crispy types that stuff comes pre-packaged in), newspaper bags... Any plastic that stretches when you tug on it instead of tearing.

No freezer bags. Even though they're stretchy & soft, they're treated with chemicals that can't be removed for recycling.

No chip bags, or candy wrappers: they tear or break when you pull on them, instead of stretching.

Please don't throw in any "maybe" stuff because then we have to sort through every piece to pull it out.