By Dee Anne Finken
for The Columbian

Moved by images of ducks and sea gulls choked by plastic six-pack carriers, youngsters in Salmon Creek are taking action in the war on pollution.

For Earth Week, Salmon Creek Elementary School students and others throughout the United States are helping birds with project Ring Leader. It's a recycling effort promoted by the nation's leading manufacturer of plastic six-pack ring holders.

"We started this project to promote the notion that rings are recyclable and to promote environmental stewardship in the schools," said Matthew G. Hayden, spokesman for ITW Hi-Cone, based just outside Chicago.

So, now, instead of tossing aside the plastic rings from pop six-packs, students are going door to door collecting rings to mail back to ITW Hi-Cone, at the manufacturer's expense.

"It's really an easy thing to do, and it's 100 percent recyclable ...which means all of the plastic goes back into production of new rings," said Robin Helm, the Salmon Creek school parent who introduced Ring Leader to the school.

And to celebrate Earth Week, Salmon Creek students are challenging other Vancouver-area schools to participate. "It's a good time and a valuable project, so let's all do it," Helm said.

In the front lobby at Salmon Creek, a 3-foot "tree" made of "plastic lumber" is draped in rings youngsters have collected in recent days. Once the tree is full, the students will "harvest" the rings, put them in a box, attach a postage-paid label, and mail the rings back to the manufacturer, Helm said.

"Schools love this program because it's free, teachers love it because it brings life to their environmental education materials, and kids as young as second grade can be responsible for shepherding the program on their own," explained ITW Hi-Cone's Hayden.

Helm said she learned of the program through her work as a Girl Scout volunteer. "I decided to introduce it to my daughter's school because I really believe as parents we need to give kids the opportunities to see that they can have an impact and to stress to them that recycling is critical to their survival.

"Most people already recycle cans, bottles, and newspapers, but the problem with recycling rings has been to be able to get them back to the manufacturer. The program, Ring Leader, solves that."

Salmon Creek principal Bill Nicolay said the message of Ring Leader is important. "This program helps us make a statement to the children that every little bit we can do to help one another does count. It also says that there is a service purpose to life, that we ought be thinking about how we can serve others."

Hayden said last year school children participating in the Ring Leader program returned nearly 60,000 pounds of rings to the manufacturer. He said each pound of returned plastic can be used to provide another 125 rings, which means nearly 7.5 million rings were made from the plastic students returned in 1997.

Myth

Hayden says that contrary to popular belief, six-pack rings have not proven to be a major entanglement threat to ducks, geese and other wildlife. He cited data from the Center for Marine Conservation in Washington D.C., which sponsors the International Coastal Clean-up annually in September. He said that data indicates fewer than four dozen incidences of animal entanglements from 1988 to 1996. "Fishing line is really the great culprit," Hayden said.

In recent years, new processes also have helped to make the rings less threatening by making them photodegradable, meaning they will break up when exposed to sunlight over a period of time, Hayden said.

ITW Hi-Cone provides educational materials, postage-paid labels, the "plastic lumber" tree and directions for schools to participate in Ring Leader.