Girl Scout Troop 1513 Raises Awareness about Single-Use Plastics to Earn the Girl Scout Bronze Award

International Plastic Free Day is observed on May 25 and encourages individuals to refrain from using any single-use plastics for one day. This includes items like plastic bottles, takeout containers, utensils, bags and wrappers. The day aims to raise awareness about plastic pollution and inspires people to reduce their reliance on single-use plastics.

Concerned about reducing plastic usage at their school, Troop 1513 jumped into action to turn old, unwanted T-shirts into reusable tote bags to earn their Bronze Award, the highest honor for a Girl Scout Junior. The troop created more than 160 shirt bags and donated them to Becky-David Elementary School to use for their book fair, instead of customary plastic shopping bags. Their efforts supported protecting the environment from additional plastic consumption while helping their school save money on purchasing bags at the same time. The troop also made bookmarks with instructions on how to create the bags to encourage their classmates to make reusable bags in the future.

“We learned about fabric waste when we completed the Girl Scout Junior Global Action Award. This made us think about the extra shirts our school didn’t need from a fundraiser a few years ago,” said troop members Evie and Sveni. “We decided to make bags out of the shirts for our school book fair. The book fair didn’t have any plastic bags left for this year. Making the bags helped us not waste the fabric and reduce the plastic waste!”

“We made a bunch of errors while working on our project before we figured it out but eventually got the hang of cutting the parts,” said Sveni. “We ended up successfully making 160 shirt bags!”

“In the future, I am excited to continue with Girl Scouts and go to camp,” said Troop member Maci.

The Girl Scout Bronze Award is the highest honor a Girl Scout Junior, girls in 4th-5th grade can achieve. It requires girls to identify a need in their community and dedicate on average more than 20 hours towards addressing and solving the issue. When Girl Scout Juniors focus on an issue, they care about, learn the facts, take action to make a difference, they gain the confidence and skills that catapult them to lifelong success.