Don’t forget to crush
It’s good exercise, it’s good fun, and it’s an easy way to maximise the use of your fortnightly recycling container. Or cut down on trips to your local recycling point.
Crush your empty plastic bottles!
Wealden’s recycling service takes all types of plastic bottles. But with 300 plastic bottles a year being produced on average by each Wealden household there are a lot of bottles to collect. They weigh very little but take up a great deal of space.
This is how you can help. By giving them a good crushing, you make room for so much more.
“After you have washed out the empty container, put it on a hard floor and stamp on it a couple of times. Or crush it with your hands, and screw back the top. It’s amazing how quickly a bulky pile of plastic containers can be reduced into a much more compact and handier size,” said Cllr Sylvia Tidy, Cabinet member for Community Development who helped crush the plastic in the before /after picture sequence (attached). “It doesn’t take much effort, and can be a great job for the children to do.”
“One of the problems that has always dogged plastic recycling is the amount of space empty plastic containers take up. This high volume-to-weight means they take up a great deal of room when collected but weigh hardly any thing.
This is a particular problem when it comes to the storage banks for plastics at our recycling points. They can fill up so quickly if the plastic hasn’t been crushed. Having to send refuse vehicles on frequent journeys to empty poorly-packed recycling banks only adds to the council’s fuel costs and avoidable carbon emissions.”
Wealden District Council’s plastic recycling is currently limited to plastic bottles because they are made from types of plastic that can easily be identified and recycled. These can be shredded within the UK and reused in a range of reformed plastic goods, including gutters, street signs, park benches and waste paper bins.
Unfortunately Wealden currently doesn’t recycle plastic food trays, margarine tubs and other forms of food packaging which are made by other types of plastics. Some other councils do take these for recycling, but it usually involves material being transported half way across the world to be reprocessed in the Far East, an arrangement which causes Wealden a number of environmental concerns.
