With Sustainability being one of the core pillars and values of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College (SMWC), the Sustainability Club received a delivery of items, closing out a three-year Caps to Benches Project recently.
The project was a student-led initiative, explained Angie Gifford, advisor of the club.
“I am very proud and impressed by the progress of this project over the last few years,” said Gifford. “This project was started in 2017 with a five-year plan, which was actually completed in three years due to the overwhelming amount of support we received from the campus and community,” Gifford stated proudly.
When the project mission was first released, the original goal was to collect enough caps to make three benches in one year. Surely enough though, in the first six months, there were enough caps collected to make not only three, but five benches in total. Gifford stated that the amount of support given by SMWC students, faculty, staff and members of the Wabash Valley was phenomenal.
Overall, the project converted more than 5,000 pounds of caps to create items such as picnic tables, benches and trash cans. One of the major benefits of these products is that they are extremely durable, which is great for the increasing student population at The Woods.
The final delivery consisted of picnic tables made from 1,200 pounds of caps.
In all, the project has resulted in 62 items made from plastic caps that would have ended up in a landfill and have now been placed throughout campus. The actions taken to complete this project has consisted of countless hours of work including events where students, faculty and staff volunteered time to clean and sort.
“The Vigo County Solid Waste Management has been a wonderful partner in all of this, especially Kathy Kinney, who provided the means by which we were able to collect, transport and create each of the sustainably sourced pieces,” said Gifford. “We are truly grateful to Kathy and the Vigo County Solid Waste Management District team for all their dedication to The Woods. From numerous amounts of plastic saved from the landfill, to providing recycling containers and more than 50 hours of transportation…Kathy and her team have truly outdone themselves.”
“I’m so happy that I got one last opportunity to do this for Saint Mary-of-the-Woods,” said Kinney, executive director of the Vigo County Solid Waste Management District, who will be retiring in early July.
Following in the footsteps of Saint Mother Theodore Guerin, SMWC works to model environmentally sustainable practices both in and out of the classroom.
When asked what was to come for the SMWC Sustainability Club, Gifford said, “There will be much discussion of new projects that have been suggested for the fall semester, but we are proud of this project. It’s a great way to show The Woods community what we stand for.”