Bottle top & other convert to ca£h scemes?

GhostHunter_3

Hello

Not sure if this is the right place?

I am looking for places that appeal for items such as bottle tops (mainly plastic) and other recyclable bits that the charity can convert to cash for fundraising.

There used to be a scheme near me that did this with plastic bottle tops but I recently went to drop off my carrier bag full to find they have stopped collecting them.

Naturally I dont just want to waste an opportunity by throwing them away as we do seem to collect quite a few in a week and I now find I automatically put it in the collection cup instead of the bin when the bottles are empty.

Our local council has supplied us with a green recycle bin which we manage to fill within 24 hrs of them emptying it (we are desparate for another 1 at least!) and the rest ends up in carrier bags which they wont take as extra so we take them to the supermarket and use the recycle units there or at the park when we walk the dog.

Any ideas?

Thanks

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poorbutrich

This may be an urban myth, but I read somewhere about people that collected thousands and thousands of plastic bottle tops for charity, only to find out that it was all a big hoax. If you do hear of somewhere that uses them, I'd be interested to hear!

Gorgeous_George

I think it's a hoax too. Did some looking via Google last year and concluded that it was likely to be a hoax.

Our recycling centre asks you to remove the tops because the bottles are easier to crush with the tops removed.

The tops are clearly a different kind of plastic to that of the bottle but even so, the volume to weight ratio is likely to make recycling uneconomical.

I crush the bottles and refit the tops so that they stay crushed thereby taking up less space in my plastic bottle bin. When the bin is full I take the bottles to the recycling centre. It's probably a mile or so and the environmental damage probably outweighs any benefit that the recycling may achieve. I think I should put the bottles in the non-recyclable wheelie-bin.

Cardboard is a similar story as this is not collected by the council recycling team either.



GG

kittiwoz

poorbutrich wrote:

This may be an urban myth, but I read somewhere about people that collected thousands and thousands of plastic bottle tops for charity, only to find out that it was all a big hoax.

That's true. There was a story in the MEN about some girl who organised for her schoolmates to collect plastic milk bottle tops as part of some sort of sponsorship deal to provide a disabled child with a wheelchair (not sure who she thought was sponsoring it, the milk marketing board?). Anyway, it was a hoax but some charity did write to the paper and say they would take all the bottle tops as they could sell them to a recycling centre but that they are a low grade plastic and worth very little.

Gorgeous_George wrote:

The tops are clearly a different kind of plastic to that of the bottle but even so, the volume to weight ratio is likely to make recycling uneconomical

I'm not at all sure that milk bottle caps are a different plastic than the bottles. They seem quite waxy and I think they might well be made of polythene only thicker than the bottles with a bit of colouring agent and opacifier, if not they're probably poypropylene. I rather suspect that the colouring and opacifier make them less recyclable than the bottles themselves rather than more because it would limit their use.

I would recommend crushing your recycling (plastic bottles and aluminium cans) so it takes up less space. If your recycling bin is still always overflowing and you want to minimse your environmental impact you might want to think about whether you could reduce the amount of packaged products you consume in the first place. If you do have overflow from your recycling then the best thing is to carry it to the nearest municpal recycling bins if it is nearby or if it is more than a mile or so, you have mobility problems, or you have a lot of heavy recycling like newspapers then to take it to a recycling centre at a time when you would be using the car anyway, like taking them to the supermarket.

GhostHunter_3

Hi Thanks for the replies.

Thought I would let you know that the council replied to my email.

1 there was a localcharity collecting the bottle caps but they abandoned it as it wasnt making enough profit.

2 I have been supplied with a secon bigger green recycling wheelie bin FREE so I now have 2. I noted it takes around a week to fill to bursting 1 and they collect every 2 weeks so this should be ok. If not husband enjoys climbing in and compacting it all down by foot, lol Oscar grouch!

I cannot see any other way I can reduce the packaging we use anymore than we do now unless the supermarket sells the items unwrapped / unpackaged! :beer:

Thanks

:T

ka7e

There is definitely a collection in the SW, for an electric wheelchair for 2 year-old Alex Eavis - featured in the Bridgwater Mercury.
Starbucks has agreed for branches to act as collection points, but I'm not sure how widespread that would be (local or national?).

Gorgeous_George

50p per black bag full. That's an awful lot of tops to buy a wheelchair.

I can only assume that the recycling company i sdoing it for the PR value OR because, with the tops removed, the bottles are easier to crush. Once crushed, the landfill would be smaller.

Who has the job for checking the tops for the number and triangle? Must take the best part of a day and, even on minimum wage, would make the task unworkable.

I could be wrong but I stil believe that recycling plastic bottle tops and plastic bottles for that matter, is more environmentally damaging than landfill.



GG

kittiwoz

While plastics generally still have to be sorted by eye for recycling which is, as you say, expensive and seriously reduces how economical it is to recycle them, however, some bottles can be identified much more quickly by eye without reference to the number codes simply because bottles of that type are always made from the same type of plastic, i.e. milk bottles are HDPE, pop bottles are PET. Those are the two most widely recycled types of plastic because they are most economically viable to recycle. They are also more economically viable for recycling because they are less likely to be coloured and even when pop bottles are coloured it is normally in a standard range of colours reflecting the colours found in glass bottles, compared to ,say, shampoo and lotion bottles which are normally HDPE or PP and come in a huge variety of colours and shades. There is work underway on automating the sorting of plastic bottles for recycling and thus increasing the range of plastics which are viable for recycling.

lagosto

Despite many posts I have found on the Internet I have always managed to find charities that have been collecting the plastic bottle tops. I also used to send them to Naomi House, and then The Rose Road !!!. As Rose Road have now finished their appeal, I found The Cat and Rabbit Rescue centre in Chichester that are collecting now.

As many (negative!) posts state in the net, these charities do need to collect an awful lot to gain the £, however, surely if everyone collected and sent them, they would add pretty quickly. I know how many we collect from our office with the amount of tea we drink!

So let's be positive and help these charities out. It's not a hoax, or an urban myth as I have been doing this for 2 years now.
:T

hogshead

Wish everyone in Gloucester knew this as with the recent flood & bottled water system, thousands upon thousands will have been binned.

We were only told to hold onto the bottles for recycling ( something which I actively do already ).

oldtoolie

The recycling companies will pay about 2.5p per pound for bottle caps. If you can figure out how to make money for a charity at that rate (accounting for transport and storage costs) you are not only a MSE but a miracle worker.