The Gilmer Community Food Pantry is always in need of a particular item, which is not edible or spendable.
The local food provider’s supply of plastic grocery bags has recently dwindled down, said Allen Triebel, food pantry director.
“(Last week), we almost had none. We’ve never had that circumstance. I put it out on Facebook, and we got a good response. But we always need them. Plastic bags are something we couldn’t survive without, and they go out as fast as we get them,” Triebel said.
Anyone is welcome to donate their unwanted plastic grocery bags to the food pantry, and it doesn’t matter which store they came from, Triebel confirmed.
They can be left in two black bins near the front entrance to the pantry, located at 5273 Highway 52 East.
The bags don’t have to be checked for holes, since that’s something volunteers will see to, Triebel noted.
“They can drop them off anytime, and we check those boxes every other day. They can just put them all in one bag and tie a knot on it,” he added.
Grocery bags aren’t used only for the facility’s Wednesday food distribution, but also for its Sack Pack program, which provides weekend food for children in local elementary schools.
Bags are often donated by some local grocery stores, but it’s not unusual for 800-1,000 of them to be used in a day’s time, Triebel noted.
“We double bag glass and single bag canned goods. Everything we give out is wrapped in something,” he said.
The pantry takes its unusable plastic bags to participating grocery stores, which have a recycling program for them, Triebel noted.
“We give them our torn ones, which we’re happy to do, because we have no place to dispose of them,” he added.