HYATTSVILLE, Md. — The charming smile on Breeze’s face might make it easy to imagine she has a social conscience, but the truth is, she just likes plastic. The end result? A lot of plastic bottles are getting recycled.
“I’ve recycled my whole life, and Breeze loves bottles, so we just put the two together,” Melissa Puglisi says of her 2-year-old golden retriever that picks up plastic bottles while out walking in their Hyattsville neighborhood.
“We allowed her to do it because we saw how much joy she gets in bringing a bottle home, so we just put it in the recycle when she’s done.”
Breeze is popular in her Hyattsville neighborhood, which is near East West Highway and Queens Chapel Road. Even the local UPS delivery driver brings her treats.
And the pooch’s proclivity toward plastic seems to be a win for everyone.
“My husband has lived on this street his whole life, so he really cares about the neighborhood and the street — and it being clean especially,” Puglisi says of husband Joe.
She never really thought about it before Breeze was featured in The Hyattsville Life & Times, but Puglisi says she now realizes that two years of collecting about 10 plastic bottles a week has to add up.
“There’s a lot of bottles and trash on the ground, so we think it definitely helps that she’s doing this.”
