Dealing With the Plastic Explosion
April 4, 2007 · Written by Adam
I previously talking about recycling plastic and asked Where Does All the Plastic Go? The main answer was landfills, but the bottles go into my recycling bag. So they get turned into more bottles then?
Well sometimes. Actually a huge range of products can be produced from plastic. Carried bags, sewer pipes, window frames CD cases, garden furniture and fleeces. Yes fleeces - the warm sweater type things you put on when you’re cold. Marks and Spencer in the UK are due to sell a recycled fleece soon, but sites such as Recycled Business Gifts and California Green Culture offer a range of recycled and eco-friendly products.
RECOUP (RECycling Of Used Plastic Ltd), UK’s leading authority on plastics waste management, has more about what they do with plastic bottles.
However as mentioned before, reusing bottles is probably better than having them recycled. Why can’t I go into my local supermarket with an emplty bottle of detergent and ask them to fill it up? Well you can, sort of. Maybe not at your supermarket, but local stores do other a refilling service. A quick search on Google should sort you out. For example if you live in Headley in Surrey you can pop in to the Ecover Refill Station and get top ups for your Ecover cleaning products.
And Selectric in Blackheath, London offer a refill scheme which acually costs 9p per bottle more than going to the supermarket, but for every 9p you’re saving a plastic bottle being produced.
Is it worth it? You decide.
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Hi Adam
Selectric also recycle Brita water filter cartridges for customers. And Sheel pharmacy on Lewisham High Street (opposite the fire station) also does Ecover refills (and I think I save about 50p a bottle on that, but I could be wrong).
BTW, I posted an account of my visit to the materials recycling facility in Greenwich on my blog last year which explains where all the recyclate from Greenwich and Lewisham goes: http://greenladywell.blogspot.com/2006/07/mrf-visit.html
Best wishes
Sue
That’s great, thaks for letting me know.
I’ve heard they can make a light weight, durable, farm fence post out of 1000 or so plastic bags. It’s a good way to get rid of plastic bags, reduce timber dependence and give the farmers something decent.
Sounds like a great use of old bags, thanks Kev. Nice blog by the way
Thanks for letting me know, I’ll look into it and add it to my list of 100 ways to save the planet http://www.lifegoggles.com/?p=499
Hi,
Just thought I would drop a note about our Refill scheme. We actually refill 10 different Ecover products now and on some of the products it saves up to £1 per bottle (hand soap).
Regards
Alan