County administrators in Indiana are offering schools, community groups, and not for profit organizations with the opportunity to acquire new benches in exchange for collecting and recycling plastic caps from beverage bottles.

Lake County, in the northwest corner of the state, has started the project as a way to promote recycling throughout the area. For any group that collects over four hundred pounds of plastic caps, the country will provide a high quality indoor and outdoor use bench made of recycled plastics.

The county has allocated funds to purchase as many as twenty benches from regional manufacturer, Green Tree Plastics in Evansville, Indiana. Benches will be awarded to groups once the redemption of the collected bottle caps begins. It takes nearly four hundred pounds of recycled plastic to make each bench, so the collection of the waste plastic helps to defray the overall cost of the bench. Each community group will be limited to acquiring four benches in the initial round of the recycling program.

WasteCare Wants You to Remember: Is your town using strategic thinking to promote recycling and green businesses? Collaborating between different groups is a great way to work together and support both community and business needs. If your town isn’t doing something like this, take the first step and ask! You may find more support and interest than you expected!