Elementary schools in any Ridwell service area are welcome and encouraged to participate. Schools need to be in a service area to enable pickup of the plastic film on our van route. Still not sure if your chool is eligible? Check out the drive registration form which shows a list of eligible schools.

Anybody with a connection to an elementary school can lead a drive! You don't need to be a Ridwell member. You may be a parent, staff member, or simply someone with ties to a local school. Just be sure you’re connected in a way that allows you to get school approval and share information with families.

You’ll receive a special yard sign to display at your school (if you select this at registration), access to a digital resources kit, and a drive webpage made just for your school where your community can join Ridwell and you can track your progress towards earning a year of plastic film pickups for your school. You’ll also have a dedicated resource from Ridwell available to answer questions along the way.

You’ll serve as the liaison between Ridwell and your school. Before registering, be sure to get any needed approval from your school. You’ll be in charge of getting the word out about this drive and sharing your school’s unique new member sign-up link with your school community. You’ll also be coordinating the collection, getting any needed supplies (i.e., bags or receptacles), and registering for pickup at the school.

Communicating early and often about the program has been key to success for past participants. This might include parent/guardian emails, assembly announcements, flyers to send home social media posts, posters at drop-off/pick-up points, Facebook PTA groups, and school newsletters. You know your community best and likely have other ideas as well!

We’ll pick up 20 or fewer large trash bags full of plastic film per trip. If your school collects more, we’ll schedule a second pickup.

While we can’t schedule pickups at a specific time, we aim to pick up at the school between 9:00am and 1:00pm to avoid the busiest times of day.

We’ll create a signup webpage for your school where you’ll be able to see the number of new members in your school community joining Ridwell. We’ll use the page to track every new member who joins until May 23, 2025.

Schools in a Ridwell service area with 10 or more new members joining through your page will receive plastic film pickups at your school for the 2025-26 school year.

The new members don’t need to attend or be directly connected to your school, so feel free to share this link with friends and family, wherever Ridwell offers service.

Ongoing plastic film pickups are designed to help keep plastic film generated on your school campus out of landfills. We’ll provide 1 labelled cardboard collection box, along with a poster of what materials are accepted.

We’ll collect up to 2 large trash bags of plastic film every 2 weeks on the day when our vans are in your school’s area. Just like the drive, we’ll aim to arrive at your school sometime between 9 am and 1 pm.

If your school is closed on a scheduled pickup day, we will come back 2 weeks later and collect up to 4 large trash bags.

If you participated in previous drives, you may remember that only Ridwell members could be leaders in some of our past drives. Since then, we made operational improvements to enable pickups directly at the school rather than at a member's home, opening up the opportunity for more people to choose to be leaders.

We’ve previously run drives in both the fall and spring. Currently, drives are annual in the spring only. Additionally, we’ve extended the time period for which schools can earn free ongoing plastic film pickups to a full school year.

We're working on a way to offer regular pickups at schools in the future. If this is a service your school would highly value and could allocate budget towards, please fill out this form and we’ll add you to our waitlist.

That's great—we’re big fans of Trex! Ridwell is a Trex partner, so the plastic film you collect for the drive can be counted towards your Trex total. Just record your collection as you typically do in the Trex portal.