Many of us go to the grocery store and once we've put away our groceries we put all the extra plastic bags under the sink or in a cupboard so they're out of sight and out of mind. 

One local school would like to take those plastic bags off of your hands and put them to better use before they potentially end up in our landfills. 

Peacock Collegiate High School in Moose Jaw recently joined a national competition that encourages classrooms across the country to collect plastic bags so they can be used to make other useful products instead of going in the

trash.

Originally their goal was to gather 5,000 to 6,000 by the end of the competition, now they have around 16,000 processed and ready to hand over but still don't think that's good enough. They've re-examined their efforts and believe they can get 35,000 plastic bags or one for every person in the city by the end of April. 

Students have most certainly gotten on board with the earth-friendly cause, but Teacher Stephen Lys said there's a deeper meaning behind their current assignment. 

"What I want is for the students to leave with a sense of stewardship and awareness of the issues and the belief that they can do something about it," explained Lys. "Not so much just memorize stuff and write tests but to actually become environmental citizens, so I always try and find some kind of project community based or out of the classroom thing that they can do."

He noted that he was surprised by how many residents in the neighbourhood of the school were willing to part with their plastic bags or excited to get rid of them when students came knocking at their door, which he believes shows his class and others first hand that sometimes you need to lead to make positive change. 

"You can accomplish a whole bunch of stuff by working together if you speak up and let your concerns be known you find often that there's a lot of people who silently agree with you, they're thinking the same things but don't do anything about it. It's kind of nice that we can have a mountain of 16,000 bags to say look at this graphic people don't want these things anymore, people don't know what to do with them, people don't know where to put them."

One student who's been happy to work with her peers and go head to head with other classrooms, but also recognizes the importance of their work, is grade 11 student Kelsee Christmann. She said the competition assignment has been a nice change of pace for them and said they've already had overwhelming support from residents. 

"I think it's just better to be out there and enjoying our environment and everything, it's just nice to see Moose Jaw's able to help us all," added Christmann. "The pen and paper stuff I guess you could say it gets kind of tiring and it gets old. There's not much that you can change by writing a note or sending out a letter to anyone, you have to be out there and active in your community and tell them this isn't okay or start change and make a movement."

Although classrooms are competing against each other in a friendly competition at Peacock High School, they understand they all need to do their part to reach their goal by the end of April to win the 2019 Plastic Bag Grab Challenge. Students have been going door to door, picking up bags that have been littered off the streets and ransacking friends and families homes to get to their goal, but now they're calling on all Moose Jaw residents for help, they're asking for anyone with plastic bags they don't want to drop them off at Peacock school during regular business hours. 

The first week of May, which is coincidently pick it up month in Moose Jaw where schools and community groups will go around and gather litter on the streets, the staff and students at Peacock will drop their collection of bags off at Walmart which then delivers all the donations to their partners who recycle the plastic and make things like plant potters, deck materials and garbage bags.

The competition may end in April but Lys' Environmental Studies class isn't stopping their good deeds there. They're hoping to put together a presentation for City Council in the near future to ask for a ban on plastic bags. Noting that major cities in Canada and the U.S. have already made the move and we'll eventually get there too, but why not do it now and be one of the first cities to make a positive change instead of coming in last.