ALERT: SoundWaters is no longer collecting nor accepting bottle caps.
This wonderful three-year project, funded by NOAA, will end with this school year.
Going forward, please continue to pick up and properly dispose of plastic you find on the ground.
At home, you need to closely follow the recycling guidelines for your community. Some communities ask you to keep the cap on the bottle and recycle them together. Others ask you to remove the cap and recycle them separately. Still other communities may ask you to recycle the bottles and send the caps to the landfill with your garbage. As confusing as this may seem, it is important that you follow your local guidelines, which are based on requirements from recycling companies.
On behalf of the thousands of students who have worked so hard to keep tons of plastic from reaching Long Island Sound, thank you for contributing to their efforts.
Useful products are being produced from all the plastic that has been collected. Watch these pages for updates as those products come back into the community.
2021/22 School Year
Middle School Students Lead the Way to a Cleaner Environment
Over the past two years (including a full pandemic school year), students have collected over 1,672,000 bottle caps! The One Million Bottle Caps project has now launched its third and final year by challenging a whole new class of Stamford middle school students to collect one million more during the 2021-22 school year. In a partnership of SoundWaters, NOAA, and Stamford Public Schools, the students will learn to take real action against the problem of microplastics in Long Island Sound and show friends, family and the community that they understand the problem and can do something real to secure the future of their planet.
A New Class of 6th Graders Accepts The Challenge
Sixth grade science classes in all six Stamford middle schools will collect and count plastic bottle caps throughout the school year. Students will gain confidence and experience as environmental stewards by recruiting friends, family and members of the community to support their quest. Their efforts and results will showcase our global plastics problem.
Collect a million bottle caps. Then What? A Dish Rack for the kitchen!
1,000,000 plastic bottle caps weigh approximately 2.5 tons so students will essentially be preventing a car’s weight in plastic from flowing into Long Island Sound, but then what? The types of plastic used in bottle caps are polypropylene and polyethylene, which can be recycled and fabricated into useful products. During the 2020/21 school years, a small group of Stamford 6th graders, led by the World Design Organization (WDO), worked on a Design Challenge with professional industrial designers from around the world (one of the benefits of Zoom) to design a product that
could be produced with their bottle caps. Read about this exciting and unprecedented design challenge. The winning design was a dish rack, perfect for small countertops. SoundWaters is currently working with the Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE), the Ultra-Poly Corporation and students at the Penn State Behrend Plastics Training Academy to produce their dish rack.
Some Stamford students will take the same design challenge during the 2021/22 school year. What product will they design?
How Can You Help? (*** Alert: SoundWaters is no longer collecting caps.)
- Pick ‘em up! When you see plastic bottle caps in the environment, pick them up. (If they’re attached to a bottle, make sure the bottle is disposed of properly.) Please, plastic caps onlyl. No Metal.
- Count Them! Please, Please, Please count the bottle caps you’ve collected before you proceed to step 3.
- Drop them off. If you are participating with your school, count them at home and then bring them to school. If you are a community member please count your caps and place them in the blue bucket on the front porch of SoundWaters in Cove Island Park with a note stating the number of bottle caps and which school you would like to put them towards.
Questions? Contact SoundWaters at bottlecaps@soundwaters.org.
Industry and Education Partners
Purpose
“It makes me want to keep on collecting more and more trash because the one million bottle caps is just the first impact on the world we can have. I think we should collect more every single year.”
– Emily, 6th grade, Rogers International School
Bottle Cap Tally: 812,338
Stamford Middle Schools
Cloonan MS:
Dolan MS: 1,036
Rippowam MS: 6,440
Rogers International School: 194,554 WHALE SCHOOL
Scofield Magnet School: 49,433 EGRET SCHOOL
Strawberry Hill School:
Turn of River MS: 36,054 PLANKTON SCHOOL
Supporting Schools
Amity Middle School (Orange, CT): 1,000
Bridges School (Cos Cob, CT): 1,693
Darien High School: 1,512
Rumsey Hall School: 109,999 SEAL SCHOOL
Westover Magnet School: 529
Tracey Magnet School: 92,530 TURTLE SCHOOL
Tolland Public Schools: 225,812 WHALE SCHOOL
Supporting Companies & Organizations
SoundWaters: 28,082
Central Arizona Florence Correctional Complex: 37,978
Cornerstone Community Church: 16,625
Danbury Women’s Club: 5,030
M&T Bank: 688
Sitia UNESCO Global Geopark (Greece): 1,309
Achievement Levels
15,000 caps – PLANKTON SCHOOL
45,000 caps – EGRET SCHOOL
70,000 caps – TURTLE SCHOOL
100,000 caps – SEAL SCHOOL
170,000 caps – WHALE SCHOOL
What Types of Bottle Caps Are We Collecting?
It is important to ensure that all waste – plastic in particular – is disposed of safely and appropriately so that it never ends up in our natural environment where it can only do damage.
The Million Bottle Cap Challenge is focused on collecting hard plastic bottle caps as representative of the global problem of improper disposal of plastics. Many types of plastic are recyclable, but students are collecting only hard plastic caps. They are more common than we realize. Here are examples of acceptable caps:
| Beverage bottle caps (water, soda, juice, sports drinks, etc.) | Milk and juice jug caps | Medicine bottle caps (labels removed) |
| Detergent bottle caps | Hair spray & spray paint caps | Toothpaste tube caps |
| Apple sauce pouch caps | Flip-top caps (ketchup, mustard, etc.) | Spout caps (mustard, etc.) |
| Shampoo & conditioner caps | Ointment tube caps | Peanut butter jar caps |
What is not being collected? Larger, more flexible plastic lids, like yogurt lids, cool whip, butter and cream cheese lids. They are often recyclable, but the students are not collecting them as a part of their challenge.
Questions? Visit MillionBottleCaps.org or email bottlecaps@soundwaters.org
