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During home visits and consultations one of the most frequent gripes of the
people we see seems to be plastic…. where can we recycle it? Why can’t we use
the black boxes for plastics? Why can only certain plastics be recycled at
collection points…..? grrrrrr, frustration.
Plastic is indeed a pain, but there are
solutions to your plastic dilemmas:
- REDUCING the
amount of plastic you purchase
- REUSING the
plastic that seems unavoidably gained
- and as a last resort RECYCLING
any plastic that is left.
Pledge to reduce, reuse or recycle
plastics
Bad Plastic
Plastic should never be land filled, why? In
landfill plastic is essentially immortal!: plastics take a long time
to break down, possibly up to hundreds of years - although no-one knows for
certain as plastics haven't existed for long enough.
The annual amount of plastic wasted in the UK is around 3 million tonnes, it
is estimated that only 7% of total plastic waste is
being recycled!
With more and more plastic products, particularly plastics packaging, being
disposed of soon after their purchase, the landfill space required by plastics
waste is a growing concern.
As well as this plastics production has a range of
environmental impacts. Plastics production:
- Requires significant quantities of resources, primarily fossil fuels, both
as a raw material and to deliver energy for the manufacturing process
- Requires other resources such as land and water and produces waste and
emissions
- Involves the use of potentially harmful chemicals, which are added as
stabilisers or colorants. Many of these have not undergone environmental risk
assessment.
What can you do?
REDUCE
- Take a strong bag to do your shopping so you don’t have to be given a new
plastic carrier every time you go to the shops
- Ask your local shops and supermarkets if they could sell products with
less packaging or re-think the amount of packaging they use
- Talk to your local council, voice your concerns on the amount of plastic
being used as food packaging: An estimated 56% of all plastics waste is used
packaging, three-quarters of which is from households!
REUSE
- Buy fewer larger bottles rather than lots of small bottles
- Keep a bottle to refill with a drink
- Save your plastic bags and reuse them as bin liners
- Keep waste packaging to use as packaging when sending fragile parcels in
the post, or use for packaging if you are moving house
- If you have one in your area, ask for milk to be delivered by the milk man
- Plastic bottles can be re-used time after time by refilling. Some shops
such as The Body Shop will refill bottles with the same products for a cheaper
price than buying new ones
- If you are a gardener, large plastic bottles can be used in the garden to
protect young plants and provide water reservoirs for older plants
- Use plastic bags and containers as art materials for schools.
RECYCLE
- Take all type 1, 2 and 3 plastics to collection points,
your nearest collection points are ASDA in Hulme and
Morrison’s in Chorlton. (Note: Examples of types 1,2 & 3, which are
acceptable - plastic drinks bottles, fabric conditioner, bleach, shampoo,
toiletries, squash bottles. Examples of types 4-7, which are not acceptable -
fruit & vegetable punnets, yoghurt pots, margarine tubs, ice cream tubs, meat
trays, polystyrene)
- Join or start up a Recycling Action Group in your local area.
Plastic can then be collected and taken to one of the smaller reprocessing
plants such as the Centre for Alternative Technology in Hebden Bridge.
AfSL supports
Old
Trafford Waste and Recycling Action Group and
Chorlton and Whalley Range
Recycling Action Group.
- Contact ‘Save-a-Cup’ if you would like
to organise the collection of polystyrene cups from your place of work if you
have a vending machine
- Send Polythene bags and mail wrappers to Polyprint: including both
printed and unprinted polythene wrappers and bags. Things like: Vegetable
bags, Supermarket bags, Mailing wrappers, Bread bags, Multipack wrappers and
Six-pack rings. The polythene items may be marked with a recycling symbol
containing the numbers '2' or '4' and/or the letters 'HDPE', high-density
polyethylene, or LDPE, low-density polyethylene. Send by post (postage must be
paid) to: Polyprint Mailing Films Ltd, Mackintosh
Road, Rackheath Industrial Estate, Rackheath, Norwich, NR13 6LJ.
Polyprint runs this operation at a loss but continues to offer this service to
the community and to help our environment.
Pledge to reduce,
reuse or recycle plastics
Contacts and References
More on
recycling
Update 3
contents page
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