Ninety-nine thousand two hundred and counting: that’s how many plastic bottle caps Bill Russo and his small army of volunteers have collected from the shoreline and other areas inside their Key Largo neighborhood.
“I have 62 water bottles filled; each one holds 1,600,” Russo said.
Behind the retired high school biology and marine science teacher’s Silver Shores home, 62, 5-gallon jugs line the fence in the backyard.
“I don’t know how many he’s up to, to tell you the truth, but they’re all taking over,” joked Russo’s wife, Myra, of his ever-growing collection of recovered bottle caps and other bits of plastic.
All of this plastic was collected by Russo and at least 25 of his neighbors, who have joined forces to become eco-warriors in their Silver Shores community.
About a year-and-a-half ago, Russo and Myra, his wife of 58 years, were seeing scores of plastic bottle caps in the water and on the shore at their ocean side neighborhood.
“Me and Myra, we noticed all these bottle caps around and we just started picking them up,” Russo recalled.
“And then when we started putting them in the bottles. People started asking, ‘What are you going to do with them?’ and I said ‘We’re just not going to let them go back. They’re not going back into the water,’” Russo said.
That’s when Russo decided to name his mission to rid the water and community of plastic bottle caps “Knot Going Back,” a play on a nautical term.
“The boat connection, knots and the sea, I couldn’t think of anything else that was tied in,” Russo said.
Russo printed T-shirts showing a picture of the plastic recovered. Soon he had a village of volunteers eager to don the T-shirt and join his environmental action club.
“I saw him doing this, picking up these bottle caps, and I asked him about it and he told me what he was doing and I said that’s interesting,” said Tom Price, a snowbird from Minnesota who joined “Knot Going Back.”
Price and others in the group want to do their part to protect our delicate environment and the marine life that calls it home.
“Think about it. You have animals that have been evolving for millions of years and plastic is only about a hundred years old,” said Russo. “They don’t know plastic from a jellyfish, so they eat it and then they get sick.”
“These creatures are basically gobbling them up like food, so we’ve got to try to stop it,” agreed Price.
Russo and his group not only scour the shoreline at Silver Shores looking for plastics, they hit Harry Harris Park as well. And that’s not all.
“Others who can’t go searching outside have saved their medical bottle caps,” explained Russo.
Silver Shores resident and volunteer Geri Smith has been collecting and saving household plastic caps since Russo started the group. Smith is an artist and envisions one day turning some of this trash into treasure.
“We will definitely do a piece of art,” said Smith.
“What I envision is something having to do with the water and I have different colors and different sizes and we’ll probably do water and maybe some fish, sky and so forth,” she added.
New Jersey snowbird and volunteer Nettie Seder is all for the proper disposal of plastics and recycling. Seder said she took part in a recycling experiment in New Jersey 45 years ago and recycling has become a way of life for her family.
“We’ve been doing mixed recycling. My daughters have grown up with it,” Seder said.
Russo says for now the thousands of collected bottle caps and other pieces of plastic will remain in the 5-gallon jugs in his backyard.
“People said why don’t you recycle them? I said I’d just rather keep them out all together. I know where they are, I don’t know what happens to recycled things,” Russo said .
“And I also think it makes a bigger statement when you have a pile of thousands and thousands and thousands of bottle caps. It makes more of an impact on people than if I sent them to the recycle plant,” he added.
Russo’s grand display of collected plastic bottle caps is having an effect.
“It’s spreading,” Myra said. “We have people whose grandchildren come over with little bags.”
“I’m so proud of everyone here that has picked up any amount, little bit or big amount. It’s a great community. We all love it here,” said Russo.
Russo hopes his efforts inspire others to start their own clubs and help save the environment, one piece of plastic at a time.
