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The Maryland SoccerPlex in Boyds is teaming with the county and high school students to help kick the habit of thousands of park visitors who toss plastic bottles in the trash instead of the recycling bin.
The effort is part of America Recycles Day, a nationwide effort to raise awareness about recycling. The SoccerPlex will be one of one of 16 locations in the county Saturday where staff from the county Department of Environmental Protection will offer information on recycling to passersby.
No more than 5 percent of the 200,000 plastic bottles that are thrown away at the SoccerPlex every year are recycled, according to Trish Heffelfinger, executive director of the Maryland Soccer Foundation, which runs the facility.
The SoccerPlex's effort coincides with the Bethesda Soccer Club's annual fall tournament that runs Saturday and Sunday and Nov. 22 and Nov. 23.
"What we're trying to do with this is to go green and we think recycling has a great impact on our operation," Heffelfinger said.
Three students in Poolesville High School's global ecology program and county employees will deploy over the soccer fields during the tournament to educate the public about recycling and its benefits.
Heffelfinger said the effort is a pilot project that she hopes will encourage more recycling by players and fans.
One of the students, Sarah Ferrari, 17, of Germantown, said she will play in the tournament and spend the rest of her time alerting spectators and fans to the recycling containers. She will join Melissa Paciotti, 17, of Damascus and Stephanie Dietz, 17, of Rockville.
The students will also be trying out different locations for recycling containers to determine where they are most likely to be used and labeling them with decals to differentiate them from regular trash containers.
All three students are working to improve recycling at the SoccerPlex as their senior project.
Ferrari said the project appealed to her as a way of combining her commitments to soccer and cleaning up the environment. She said she had long noticed during matches at the SoccerPlex that the recycling containers around the fields weren't being used as much as they should be.
Heffelfinger said most of the 600,000 or so people attending events at the SoccerPlex throughout the year drink from plastic bottles. She estimated, based on the number of spectators, that about 200,000 plastic bottles are discarded at the facility every year.
The Soccerplex has 35 recycling containers, the same number as non-recycling containers, Heffelfinger said.
