Lily Rainey, 12, left, and Carina Basora, 11, stand next to the baggerie they installed at Tom’s Market, which allows patrons to borrow and return canvas bags. The baggerie was built as part of their team’s participation in the First Lego League competition, and reflects the competition’s theme of dealing with trash. The team was inspired to reduce the use of plastic grocery bags, which they found through research to be immensely harmful to the earth, its animals and its people. (submitted Photo)
Shopping at Tom’s and forgot your reusable bag? These kids have got you covered.
- Published: February 6, 2016
A new blue wooden structure near the front door of Tom’s Market is the recently constructed “baggerie” created by a group of Mills Lawn School students who are also members of the Super Snack Snatchers, the school’s First Lego League, or FLL, team. As a team project, the kids created the baggerie to house reusable bags that store patrons are welcome to borrow, then return again to the store, in an effort to help villagers reduce their use of plastic bags, and thus help make living on earth more sustainable.
“Please use the baggerie,” team member Nick Calfee, 12, said in an interview this week. “It’s a very friendly way of illuminating the problem of plastic bags which are killing animals and polluting the earth. I learned that even the smallest things can make a difference in the world if you try.”
The team members decided to tackle the problem of plastic grocery bags after seeing the documentary, “Bag It,” which taught them that it takes 500 years to degrade one plastic bag, and that then the plastic turns into small plastic pellets that have created a “trash continent” in the Pacific Ocean. Sea animals often consume plastic by mistake, or get tangled up in it, the students learned.
For a more detailed article on the baggerie, see the Feb. 4 issue of the Yellow Springs News.
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