Guinness World Record to be set in Halcottsville

May 8—Pieces of plastic many people don't think about and discard will help a Halcottsville group set a Guinness World Record May 20.

"I wanted to make an environmental statement that even the smallest things add up," Halcottsville resident Sherry Suess said. "People pull these tabs out and throw them away and don't even think about the plastic problem. It's in everything."

A majority of the plastic pull tabs found in a variety of milk, creamer, nut milk and juice containers are not recyclable and are discarded, Suess said. "I started saving them and thought there must be something I could do with them," she said. "I chained them together and used them on my Christmas tree as garland."

Suess had been collecting pull tabs for two years and wondered if a Guinness World Records had been set for the longest chain of pull tabs. "I wrote and told them my idea," she said. "They have very strict rules and rules on how to get evidence to them."

She said Guinness needs video evidence. A licensed surveyor must measure the chain and two witnesses must submit signed statements.

When Guinness responded, the organization gave her a goal of 1,000 meters, or 3,281 feet, Suess said. She balked at that amount, so the organization reduced it to 50 meters, or 164 feet. Suess said there was some confusion, as people have strung the metal pull tabs from beer and soda cans together to be included in the Guinness World Records, but a string of plastic pull tabs hasn't been included in the record books.

"It's the first time, so we will establish a world record," she said. "By the time we're done, we should have 14,000 pull tabs and 700 feet."

Suess said has spent the past two years collecting pull tabs to establish the record.

She said the community has come together to help her establish the record. Community members help her string the tabs together and local businesses Watershed Café, Café Marguerite, Sweet Pea Supply, Fairview Public Library, The Village East, Margaretville Telephone Company and Catskill Recreation Center gave her the pull tabs they saved.

In addition to local community members and businesses contributing pull tabs, Suess said pull tabs have come from nine different states and 17 towns in New York. She said a charter school in New Jersey had its green team collect pull tabs for one year and send them to her. She has told people on planes in flight about the project and has received pull tabs from people living in New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Connecticut, Virginia and Georgia.

She said 9,800 pull tabs have been chained together and "there are a whole lot more to chain." To make it easier to count how many pull tabs are in the chain, every 100th pull tab is a different color than the typical white one found in a variety of containers, Suess said.

In addition to making a chain, she attached 400 pull tabs to a hat she wore to a Kentucky Derby party at the MARK Project on Saturday. Those tabs will be removed from the hat and added to the chain. Suess said she was able to invite people to the unveiling of the chain at 2 p.m. Saturday, May 20, in the hamlet of Halcottsville.

"We are asking people for help," she said. She needs 70 people to hold the chain straight so a surveyor can measure it and people can take photographs with cameras and a drone to send to Guinness to show proof of the feat.

After the record is established, Suess hopes the chain will be placed in Halcottsville's new history museum.

For more information about the challenge, visit https://tinyurl.com/mrysrteb.

Vicky Klukkert, staff writer, can be reached at vklukkert@thedailystar.com or 607-441-7221.