The Boys and Girls Club of Easton had a simple request: Instead of throwing out your bottle caps, give them to us.

Four months later, the club now has a three-bench triangular picnic table.

They got the table by collecting more than 550 pounds of plastic bottle caps. It arrived Thursday from Indiana. The campaign to collect recycled bottle caps started in late June.

“The Lehigh Valley has embraced this and it’s amazing,” said Kim Reddick of the Bethlehem-based Martino Marketing Group. Her company organized and coordinated the campaign. They sent the caps to Green Tree Plastics, which in turn sent the club the table.

“We thought it was something fun we could do with the Boys and Girls Club and the community,” Reddick said.

They’re 300 pounds worth of caps on their way to another table or bench or whatever piece of outdoor furniture club Executive Director Dean Young decides he wants. That’s a combined 850 pounds of caps raised so far, well on the way to the 1,100 pounds they’ll need for two pieces of furniture. (A half ton of caps is 1,000 pounds.)

Young said the club members can sit around the outdoor table and collaborate or play games.

“They can sit and play checkers or color. Anything to invite people to sit down and do what we used to do, talk to each other,” Young said.

The kids earned it. They’re a big part of the collection effort.

Caps have come in from everywhere. The children convinced local businesses to put collection receptacles out for their employees. The children collected them at home and brought them to the club.

“Every time I come home from somewhere there’s a package of caps on my porch,” said Monica Esposito, a sales executive from Martino Marketing Group.

One person from Florida saw the campaign on the internet and mailed in four pounds of caps, Young said.

“I think people are in the recycling mode,” Esposito said. “People say, ‘I don’t want to throw this out if I don’t have to.’”

How to help

The campaign to collect caps continues. You can drop these types of caps off at the Boys and Girls Club of Easton, 210 Jones Houston Way, Easton.

Drinks, ketchup, medicine, milk jugs, detergent, hair spray, toothpaste, deodorant, apple sauce pouches, spray paint, ointments, baby food, shampoo, cottage cheese, mayonnaise, yogurt, peanut butter, ice cream buckets, cool whip, coffee cans, cream cheese, butter and Pringles.

Metal caps aren’t acceptable. Nor are caps from soap pumps, lotion pumps and K-cups.

Lids with recycling numbers 2, 4 and 5 are acceptable. Lids with numbers 1, 3, 6 and 7 are not acceptable.