Ninety-nine thousand 200 and counting: that’s what number of plastic bottle caps Invoice Russo and his small military of volunteers have collected from the shoreline and different areas inside their Key Largo neighborhood.
“I’ve 62 water bottles stuffed; every one holds 1,600,” Russo stated.
Behind the retired highschool biology and marine science trainer’s Silver Shores residence, 62, 5-gallon jugs line the fence within the yard.
“I don’t know what number of he’s as much as, to let you know the reality, however they’re all taking up,” joked Russo’s spouse, Myra, of his ever-growing assortment of recovered bottle caps and different bits of plastic.
All of this plastic was collected by Russo and not less than 25 of his neighbors, who’ve joined forces to grow to be eco-warriors of their Silver Shores neighborhood.
A couple of year-and-a-half in the past, Russo and Myra, his spouse of 58 years, had been seeing scores of plastic bottle caps within the water and on the shore at their ocean aspect neighborhood.
“Me and Myra, we seen all these bottle caps round and we simply began choosing them up,” Russo recalled.
“After which once we began placing them within the bottles. Individuals began asking, ‘What are you going to do with them?’ and I stated ‘We’re simply not going to allow them to return. They’re not going again into the water,’” Russo stated.
That’s when Russo determined to call his mission to rid the water and neighborhood of plastic bottle caps “Knot Going Again,” a play on a nautical time period.
“The boat connection, knots and the ocean, I couldn’t consider anything that was tied in,” Russo stated.
Russo printed T-shirts exhibiting an image of the plastic recovered. Quickly he had a village of volunteers desperate to don the T-shirt and be a part of his environmental motion membership.
“I noticed him doing this, choosing up these bottle caps, and I requested him about it and he instructed me what he was doing and I stated that’s attention-grabbing,” stated Tom Value, a snowbird from Minnesota who joined “Knot Going Again.”


Value and others within the group need to do their half to guard our delicate surroundings and the marine life that calls it residence.
“Give it some thought. You have got animals which were evolving for hundreds of thousands of years and plastic is simply a few hundred years previous,” stated Russo. “They don’t know plastic from a jellyfish, in order that they eat it after which they get sick.”
“These creatures are mainly gobbling them up like meals, so we’ve acquired to attempt to cease it,” agreed Value.
Russo and his group not solely scour the shoreline at Silver Shores in search of plastics, they hit Harry Harris Park as effectively. And that’s not all.
“Others who can’t search around outdoors have saved their medical bottle caps,” defined Russo.
Silver Shores resident and volunteer Geri Smith has been gathering and saving family plastic caps since Russo began the group. Smith is an artist and envisions sooner or later turning a few of this trash into treasure.
“We will certainly do a bit of artwork,” stated Smith.
“What I envision is one thing having to do with the water and I’ve totally different colours and totally different sizes and we’ll in all probability do water and possibly some fish, sky and so forth,” she added.
New Jersey snowbird and volunteer Nettie Seder is all for the right disposal of plastics and recycling. Seder stated she took half in a recycling experiment in New Jersey 45 years in the past and recycling has grow to be a lifestyle for her household.
“We’ve been doing blended recycling. My daughters have grown up with it,” Seder stated.
Russo says for now the hundreds of collected bottle caps and different items of plastic will stay within the 5-gallon jugs in his yard.
“Individuals stated why don’t you recycle them? I stated I’d simply quite preserve them out all collectively. I do know the place they’re, I don’t know what occurs to recycled issues,” Russo stated .
“And I additionally assume it makes a much bigger assertion when you have got a pile of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of bottle caps. It makes extra of an influence on folks than if I despatched them to the recycle plant,” he added.
Russo’s grand show of collected plastic bottle caps is having an impact.
“It’s spreading,” Myra stated. “We have now folks whose grandchildren come over with little baggage.”
“I’m so happy with everybody right here that has picked up any quantity, little bit or huge quantity. It’s an awesome neighborhood. All of us like it right here,” stated Russo.
Russo hopes his efforts encourage others to start out their very own golf equipment and assist save the surroundings, one piece of plastic at a time.