Niverville Middle School (NMS) was a beneficiary late last year of a unique gift—a bench made almost entirely of recycled single-use plastics. Students have participated since September in a program called Bag Up Manitoba, an initiative promoting the collection of plastic bags to be repurposed into something altogether different.
Bag Up Manitoba is a product of Take Pride Winnipeg!, a charitable organization dedicated to keeping Manitoba’s capital city clean and beautiful. Opportunities to participate in the plastic bag recycling program are extended to rural schools as well, giving students from around the province the chance to do something important for the environment.
As well, the initiative is intended as a learning tool regarding mankind’s plastic bag overuse and waste.
Since the program’s inception in 2008, more than 10 million plastic bags have been taken out of circulation and repurposed into Frisbees, birdhouses, planter boxes, birdfeeders, and benches.
This fall, 168 elementary schools participated.
“This year we made it a competition,” says middle school teacher Laura van den Brul. “We have 16 home rooms and the class that collected the most bags would get a treat… and a certificate that we made for them.”
Rising to the challenge, every classroom participated, and together they collected more than 11,000 plastic bags in 30 days. In the end, Ms. Heinz’s Grade Six class got top marks for collecting almost 3,000 of those bags.
ReGen Composites is the final destination for all the collected bags. This Winnipeg manufacturing company uses plastic and wood waste as their base materials, creating strong, durable, and eco-friendly products while diverting all of this waste from the landfill.
This year, ReGen awarded composite benches to six schools in a random draw. Niverville Middle School was among the lucky recipients and the bench now provides a resting spot in the school’s foyer. It’s also a regular reminder of the positive things that can happen when you work together toward a common goal.
The bag collection initiative in the school was headed up by a young team of activists known as SWAG: Students Working Around the Globe. Van den Brul oversees this extracurricular social justice group comprised of students from Grades Five through Eight. Twice a month, they meet during their lunch hour to discuss ways they might affect climate justice, social justice, and human rights.
Early each school year, a variety of global and local initiatives are chosen. Throughout the balance of the year, SWAG organizes school-wide fundraising efforts, such as monthly bake sales and annual pop-up shops, to raise awareness and money for their chosen causes.
This year’s global initiative includes the support of the Osu Children’s Library Fund in Ghana, West Africa. The fund was created by Canadian Kathy Knowles to provide fully stocked libraries in the hopes of promoting reading among children and literacy for adults.
“I’ve never been to Ghana, but my husband was there two summers ago and he kept hearing about these libraries,” says van den Brul, who adds that it was a campaign these young students could really get behind.
Local fundraising campaigns include many initiatives the students have been working at for years, like a winter clothing and sundries collection for Siloam Mission and a pop-up shop of products from Ten Thousand Villages.
“[The pop-up shop is] a huge hit,” van den Brul says. “This year we sold about $3,000 worth, and a lot of it was chocolate bars… Every class can sign up for a store visit… It’s very, very sweet because these kids come and buy something pretty for their mom or something nice for their dad [for Christmas].”
Van den Brul says it also gives SWAG members an opportunity to teach other kids about the importance of making purchases with fair trade in mind.
On the environmental side, SWAG has successfully implemented school-wide composting, which is run by the Grade Seven classes.
Van den Brul says it’s never hard to find volunteers to organize this program. On a rotational basis, volunteers from each class take turns collecting pails of compost from every classroom, removing it to an outdoor cart and returning the washed pails to their rightful spots. The compost is picked up by a local composting company every Thursday.
“We’re trying to build a culture here at NMS,” van den Brul says. “We care about the environment, we care about people, we care about human rights, and we care about education.”
She adds that since young Greta Thunberg took up the cause’s banner in the past year, students have become even more aware of environmental concerns. For many young people, the issue of climate change has created a level of fear over what their future will hold.
“When you’re doing something to help, I think it helps to alleviate anxiety and I think that’s important,” says van den Brul.
Without question, organizing the SWAG team of 15 to 20 students eats into van den Brul’s non-teaching hours, but she says her passion for social justice and the climate make it all worth her while.
“There were a lot of people here before me that were really forward-thinking in getting [social justice initiatives] going,” van den Brul says. “Hopefully, when I’m retired, somebody will take these things on and keep improving [on them].”
