Area students campaign to put an end to plastic, paper shopping bags
Brightly decorated signs have began turning up at food stores in Arlington Heights and Mount Prospect. They appear at the end of grocery aisles, near the meat counter and beside the dairy case.
These handmade advertisements go beyond promoting grocery items. They promote saving the environment, and they come straight from a vested constituency: local school children.
"It's scary," says Katie Schumacher of Arlington Heights, a seventh-grader at St. James Catholic School. "It's our generation that will be faced with this. If we don't do something, who will?"
Schumacher was among students at seven schools in Arlington Heights and Waukegan to launch the conservation project on Earth Day.
What she and her classmates are proposing is simple, she says. They want to encourage shoppers to stop using plastic and paper grocery bags and bring their own cloth ones instead.
The kids hung their first posters at Trader Joe's in Arlington Heights, then began circulating them at Dominick's Finer Foods and at Jewel Food Stores.
Already, the Dominick's in the Town & Country Shopping Center in Arlington Heights has seen a response.
"People have been buying up the cloth bags," says John Heiman, store manager. "It's nice to see, and we're happy to be involved in a community project like this."
On Earth Day in mid-April, students at Olive-Mary Stitt, Patton, St. James, South and Thomas middle schools began making the signs -- more than 200 in all.
"I've always been a tree hugger, so I care about the earth," says Therese Coughlin, 12, of Arlington Heights. "Now, it's just a matter of encouraging people to recycle."
The students encourage shoppers to keep canvas bags in the trunks of their cars, at all times. When they shop, they should bring the bags in with them, and return the bags to the trunk after they return home and unload their groceries.
"It's so easy," says Bonnie Cimo, of Arlington Heights, one of three adults advising students on the project. "That's why we picked this -- because it was something people could actually do."
Students left pledge sheets at each store that contain statistics about the dangers of toxins and hazardous waste produced by use of billions of plastic bags each year, as well as on the millions of trees cut down each year to make paper bags -- 14 million in 1999 alone.
"I want to show that kids can help with world problems," says Mac Korab, 10, of Arlington Heights.
His classmates at St. James, nod their heads in agreement.
"We always talk about saving the world in school," says Kevin Kern, 13, of Arlington Heights. "Now, we have a chance to do something about it."