“Reuse, Renew, Recycle”

YEAR 7 DESIGN TECHNOLOGY

ACTIVITIESJUNE 2008

UNWANTED PLASTIC PACKAGING

A trip to the shops these days is likely to result in almost as much packaging as food.

Once used, these wrappers, bags and trays are destined for the bin.

Ever tried to find a place to recycle plastics in the UK?

It's a fruitless mission.

Shopping list: Nectarines, kiwifruit, avocado, goat's cheese, baked potatoes, sliced ham, olives, and cheesecake for dessert.

Rubbish generated: four plastic bags, cling film, six plastic pots, trays - one polystyrene foam, two plastic and one pulped cardboard - a cake-shaped plastic box and a cardboard box with plastic windows, all packed into a plastic carrier bag. So what to do with this lot once lunch has been eaten? Straight into the bin it goes. While we are encouraged - and will soon be required by law - to recycle our waste, it is not always straightforward to put this into practice. The one tray made from cardboard is biodegradable and can be composted (by those with gardens). While the local supermarket has a collection point for carrier bag recycling, no other type of plastic is accepted.

PLASTICS RECYCLED                  

             

The UK's problem with recycling plastic is not in finding a use for it. It's in getting it from the consumer to the reprocessing

plant. The cost of pick-up, storage and delivery far outweighs what local authorities can

earn by taking plastics to be recycled - the only exception is drinks bottles, which are

heavier than, say, yoghurt pots, and so are worth more.

11.3m plastic bottles collected for recycling since 1989 49% of UK councils run collection schemes for bottles

This includes 4,100+ bottle banks and kerbside pick-up for 3.6m+ homes

RECYCLING PLASTICS

In a survey by Recoup, the UK's household plastics recycling organisation, 75% of councils without a collection scheme blame the cost.

"It's a chicken and egg situation," says Claire Wilton, of Friends of the Earth.

"There's not many reprocessors in the UK, so many councils find it's not worth collecting plastics.

And because there's not much used plastic available, there are not many reprocessors."

Alan Davey, of Linpac Plastics Recycling, says his firm - like the majority of others in this field - deals mainly with commercial and industrial waste.

RECYCLING PLASTICS

"All this food packaging of yours is recoverable but there's no effective subsidised collection system in the UK to make it worth the effort.

"If there was, we could turn it into car parts, video cassettes, shampoo bottles - we have 1,100 product applications. Anything that can be made from virgin

plastic can be made from recycled plastic. The quality is the same."

Instead, much of it goes into landfill or up in smoke in an incinerator. Neither does the environment any favours.

Plastic takes centuries to break down - not only taking up space but leaching toxins into the soil and water. And burning plastic is like burning a fossil fuel,

as it is made from oil.

Nearly three-quarters of the world's population uses second-hand clothes, either bought through the marketplace or distributed by charitable

organisations.

Textile recycling first got off the ground about 200 years ago in the Yorkshire Dales, where they know a thing or two about textiles. Old clothes were collected in the horse-drawn carts of the 'rag and bone' men, who most

probably wore second-hand clothing themselves - entrepreneurs well ahead of their time.

Fascinating facts about textiles

Recycling textiles

Textiles such as clothing, curtains and shoes can be recycled either by using them again, second hand, or by processing them to re-use the materials.

Cutting down on the quantity of textiles we throw away makes a lot of sense for a number of reasons. By recycling more of them we will:

save energy save water

save natural resources reduce landfill

Why recycle textiles?

Garments and shoes in reasonable condition can be sold second-hand or donated to the world's needy. Cloth such as curtains and bed linen can be re-used to make clothing.

Textiles in poorer condition can be shredded and used to make cushion filling, carpet underlay and loft insulation, for example. As well as helping large numbers of people directly, recycling old textiles has real environmental advantages as well.

Recycling textiles saves energy because a garment re-used is a garment that doesn't have to be manufactured. It also saves the energy otherwise used in processing raw wool and cotton, or manufacturing synthetic textiles.

Why recycle textiles?

Recycling textiles save water because some textile industrial processes use an awful lot of it. If everyone in the UK bought just one reclaimed woollen garment each year, we would save about 370 million gallons of water - more than the contents of an average UK reservoir.

Recycling textiles saves natural resources such as the petroleum-based constituents of synthetic materials and the dyes used to colour cotton and wool.

Recycling textiles reduces landfill because although they only make up about 2% of household waste, that's still 2,400 tonnes to find space for, from Rotherham alone - the weight of 340 large African elephants.

Marks & Spencer and Oxfam have launched Britain's biggest ever clothes recycling

scheme.

The M&S and Oxfam Clothes Exchange was announced on the first anniversary of Marks and Spencer's innovative Plan A scheme, which aims to raise and promote environmental awareness, and eventually make the high street store carbon neutral. By encouraging recycling, the initiative aims to not only raise funds for Oxfam, but also reduce the amount of

unwanted clothing that ends up in landfills. The UK currently throws away 1 million tons of clothing every year.

As an incentive for prospective recyclers, anyone who donates M&S clothing to Oxfam will receive a £5 Marks & Spencer voucher, which can be used on purchases over £35 on any fashion, homewares or beauty

products.

HOW ARE PLASTICS CLASSIFIED?

COMPANIES WHO SELL RECYCLED ITEMS

COMPANIES WHO SELL RECYCLED ITEMS

Since TRAID launched in 1999, we have donated over

£1.2 million to bring real improvements to the lives of people living in some of the poorest regions

of the world.In 2007, TRAID pledged over £200,000 towards remarkable projects which are right now

increasing the supply of clean water in villages in Kenya, enabling people

affected by HIV to run their own micro solar businesses in Malawi,

and creating a new fishing co-operative in the Philippines.

CHARITIES WORKING WITH RECYCLING

RECYCLING THE TEXTILES IN INDIA

Here at Oxfam’s Wastesavers depot in Yorkshire, donations are sorted into groups: for resale in their own charity shops; or restyling by fashion designers; for sale to commercial textile recyclers for export; or to be pulped for mattress filling, carpet underlay and upholstery.

At a commercial textile recycling company, clothing is sorted for the international market. Some countries ban the import of secondhand clothing, but do permit slashed garments to enter as a source of raw material. Here garments are fed into a mutilating machine which prevents them from being illegally sold as clothing in the destination countries.

India permits the import of woollen clothing as a source of fibre for the local shoddy recycling industry. Cast-off jumpers, suits and coats are sorted by colour in large warehouses in Panipat, north India before being recycled. Labels are removed,

clothing is then shredded, pulped and respun into shoddy yarn.

Shoddy yarn can be woven or knitted into new products such as blankets, shawls and jumpers. The more colourful blankets feature either checks or flower designs. The “vase of flowers” motif has been used for at least two

thousand years in south Asia.

New labels are attached. The discarded brand names of once-coveted Western clothing are replaced by those of Indian gods such as Neelkanth (Siva).

In a tourist market in central Delhi, saris, shawls and blouses are remade into bedspreads, cushion covers and bags. Such items have become popular in the West and can be found in boutiques, markets and festivals across the UK.