recycled plastic picnic tables Promote recycled products such as plastic picnic tables at schools, stores and parks to raise awareness

Offering plastic picnic tables and plastic benches made with recycled materials for use by the public can be one of the keys to promoting conservation in your town.  Rather than just talk about the benefits of recycling, you can walk the talk and show the real, tangible rewards of green living.

If you look on the web at various governmental programs to promote recycling, most of them focus on promoting the concept of recycling.

For example, with the Municipal Government Toolkit from the US Department of Environmental Protection, they outline several steps a town can follow to increase participation in a recycling program.

Every town in America is probably involved in some sort of recycling or sustainability effort - they would be foolish not to. A successful plastic recycling program can make a major dent in the expansion of landfills. Landfills are growing exponentially in this country. They continue to grab up acreage, they are expensive to maintain and measures have to be taken to watch who knows what hazardous materials are being dumped in there.

According to the EPA, 32 million tons of plastic waste was created in the US in 2012. A pitiful 9% of the total plastic waste used by consumers that year was actually recycled. Think of the potential!

According to the EPA "Markets for some recycled plastic resins, such and PET and HDPE (types of plastic) are stable and even expanding in the United States. Currently the US has the capacity to be recycling plastics at a greater rate."

Did you catch that? While Americans only recycle 9% of total plastics, there is a huge demand from manufacturers  to buy even more tonnage of recycled plastic. We're literally throwing money away!

The EPA toolkit relies heavily on communication and outreach. It does work. At least with a certain segment of the population who gets the concept. But for non-recyclers, it's harder to convince them. The EPA suggests you promote the positives of recycling, rather than attempting to sway them with heavy-handed messages or even guilt trips.

But New York State has a more interesting approach. Their Department of Environmental Conservation includes all that educational outreach stuff, but they also focus heavily on supplying hard evidence that displays the actual end benefits of recycling.

Use plastic picnic tables, plastic benches and plastic lecterns in schools

They encourage schools, universities and towns to buy products with recycled content - copy paper, toilet paper, refilled toner cartridges, pencils, rulers, plastic picnic tables and plastic benches.

Show these products to students and explain how the recycling process works, from the gathering of the raw materials collected at the curbside to the finished products on the recycled content side.

Let students eat on recycled plastic picnic tables. Place a teacher behind recycled plastic lecterns in every classroom. Provide a way for the kids to hang out with their friends on recycled plastic benches.

recycled plastic lectern Use plastic recycled lecterns in schools

This hands-on approach to the payoffs from recycling will have a meaningful impact on youngsters. They will go home and tell their parents. They will grow up to be more environmentally-minded. They will become recyclers and green advocates themselves.

The DEC also encourages businesses, government agencies and even places of worship to purchase and promote products with recycled content. The big advantage of displaying recycled plastic benches or plastic picnic tables is that these products are highly visible to the public.

Again, same as schools, place plastic picnic tables and plastic benches made with recyclables in prominent, high-traffic areas. People will get a chance to experience firsthand the benefits of recycling - they can see it, touch it and use it.

Citizens will realize: So this is what happens to all those plastic water bottles and milk jugs we haul out to the curb every week in those recycling bins.

They can see those plastic containers and bottles in that bin are no longer wasted by piling up as more garbage in an ever-expanding landfill.

Their efforts help trash gain a second life as a tangible, touchable product. A product that demonstrates that yes, each and every one of us can help Mother Earth by using fewer raw materials, generating fewer carbon emissions and reusing what we create. This is what happens when you do - you provide materials to create products…rather than deplete more of our precious natural resources.

How to pay for recycled plastic benches

There's a strategy you can use to provide recycled plastic picnic tables or plastic benches in your town or school that can reduce the cost or acquire products made with recycled content totally free. Many towns and parks offer a buy-a-bench program. Individuals can purchase a memorial bench, logo bench or other outside furnishing and then add a plaque or logo. This provides a showcase of recycled products to a town at No Cost. Zero. Free.

A community outreach group or civic organization or church group could approach businesses with this idea for sponsoring recycled plastic picnic tables and plastic benches.

The simple plate can read something to the effect: "This plastic bench is made with 100% recycled materials and was provided by the "green" minded folks at XYZ Business."

It will not only show the public how this business supports the entity, but it will also show the public this business is environmentally-friendly. That's a big plus with millennials and frankly every generation today. On top of that, the business' "pro-green" brand is promoted 365 days a year. Triple win.

You know the clichés. Seeing is believing. A picture is worth a thousand words. Most people have no idea what happens to that stuff they put in those recycling bins. Their children have no idea what happens to that plastic milk jug on the dining room table.

To them, the items just disappear into the back of a recycling truck every week and go off into whatever.

Use recycled plastic picnic tables, plastic benches, recycled paper and other products to show them this is where those items are going, into real products, into a real strategy to truly save the planet. Their planet.

See a large array of plastic picnic tables made from recycled materials offered by The Park Catalog.

Here are the plastic benches.

Read the NY Department of Environmental Conservation well-prepared bullet-point list of ways to promote recycling.

Call us at 888-709-7820 if you need assistance with a logo bench sponsorship program.

recycled plastic benches Recycled plastic benche