High schoolers create sleeping mats out of plastic bags, donate to shelter

ALBEMARLE COUNTY, Va. (WVIR) - Around 20 students at Albemarle County High School are a part of a group called the “Make a Change Club.”

They are doing just that by bringing together their desire for a sustainable world with their skills at crocheting.

It all starts with plastic bags from the grocery store.

“We collect plastic bags from around the school or people bring them in from home,” Junior Veronica Vitko said.

Just a day before school lets out for the year, the clubs leaders, Veronica Vitko, Ashlyn Zarzyski, Cathryn Riley, and Harper Veliky, showed what bags they had left. It was nothing in comparison, they said, to the 8,400 plastic bags they have collected.

“Usually we have members during our Patriot Period or club meeting cut up the bags into strips and then tie them together and that creates chains of plastic that we use as yarn,” Vitko said.

All the students are taught how to crotchet.

With the plastic yarn, they are creating body-size sleeping mats.

Once completed, the Albemarle high schoolers give the mats to the Haven, a day shelter in Charlottesville.

So far, the club has donated 12 mats.

“This would just be trash and it would be thrown into a landfill or make its way into the ocean,” Junior Ashlyn Zarzyski said. “It’s being used for something that someone actually needs.”

Their hard work and ingenuity is being noticed.

The students are the first high school group to win the UVA Sustainability Leadership Award.

“We were awarded $1,000 and we want to put that towards composting and a community garden,” Junior Cathryn Riley said.

As for the mats, the students say they are talking with other schools to teach them how to do the same.

“I feel like that would be a good way of expanding almost,” Riley said.

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