RIP--the woman you never heard of. . . who changed our world.

RIP: The woman you never heard of... who changed our world!


Milly Zantow has passed away is Prairie du Sac, Wisconsin at 91. You likely never heard of her. And yet she affected your life every day for decades.
You know the little triangle symbols on plastics, with the numbers (1-7) inside, that tell you how to recycle? That's the "plastic identification code." We all know it, and we think it's been there forever. It hasn't. It began in the late 1970s, and it all goes back to a very sweet lady, a neighbor of mine, Milly.

The story goes that Milly took a trip to Japan and was impressed with how clean the country was, the lack of litter and plastic that was tossed away that she was accustomed to in the U.S. That inspired her to figure out how to recycle plastics, when there was no system, no infrastructure, no market, no funding, no awareness, no public campaign, to do so. It all started in the small towns of Sauk County, Wisconsin, where Milly lived. But let's let Milly tell the story, courtesy this nice short video made a couple years ago by students at the UW-Madison.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Milly Zantow, a woman who wanted to make a difference in the world... and did.
Milly had been living in the nursing home in town. Now we say good-bye to her. Wisconsin gave the world John Muir, Aldo Leopold, Gaylord Nelson. New heroes are being forged now, fighting the corrupt iron mine moguls up north and the frac sand mine industry in the west, building urban agriculture in Milwaukee and organic farming in the Driftless Region. But let's pay a quiet moment of respect to a dear lady who reached every home in the nation with her quiet determination.

. . .
Here is a 2010 article from the Wisconsin State Journal about Milly.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/08/04/1319112/-RIP-The-woman-you-never-heard-of-who-changed-our-world?detail=email