Recycling plastic wrappers

elle_gee

Thanks all.

When I was at my parents yesterday i found a cardboard wheel thingie distributed by their council where you spin the arrow to what you want to recycle and it shows you which bin to put it in. Unfortunately the answer the plastic wrappers and film was the ordinary household rubbish bag Nowhere to recycle them.

C_Ronaldo

ArmchairTycoon wrote: »

The best option and cheapest for all concerned to to make it cost the supermarkets, not council tax payers, it is the fastest way to get them to change their attitudes to excessive packaging. The best way to help protect the environment is to avoid generating waste rather than find solutions to dispose of it afterwards.

Yes i agree with you, but it would take alot of shoppers to do this for the supermarkets to take notice,

Ben84

On closer inspection, I discovered many more Sainsburys products say you can recycle the plastic wrapping in the bag recycling bins they have in many of their big stores. It seems to be all the LD-PE plastics so far, which makes sense as this is the same plastic most supermarket bags are made from.

I've emailed Sainsburys to ask them if I can recycle all LD-PE plastic films there, and I'll post the details when they get back to me.

Although it would only be some of the plastic films we currently throw away, it would be great if we could recycle LD-PE films, as now we recycle most other items they represent a reasonable amount of our remaining landfill waste.

morg_monster

I've also noticed this new trend with Sainsburys. I bought some avocados in a net bag the other day (I know, naughty, should have bought loose) and it said you could put the net (but not the label!) into the plastic bag recycling bins. ALso I've noticed it on grape bags and toilet paper wrappers. Now I put any of this kind of "stretchy but strong" plastic (but not cling film) into these bins - eg the wrapper around the mags in the sunday paper. I hope other supermarkets follow JS's lead and put these messages on their packaging soon too. Might write to Waitrose...

C_Ronaldo

morg_monster wrote: »

I've also noticed this new trend with Sainsburys. I bought some avocados in a net bag the other day (I know, naughty, should have bought loose) and it said you could put the net (but not the label!) into the plastic bag recycling bins. ALso I've noticed it on grape bags and toilet paper wrappers. Now I put any of this kind of "stretchy but strong" plastic (but not cling film) into these bins - eg the wrapper around the mags in the sunday paper. I hope other supermarkets follow JS's lead and put these messages on their packaging soon too. Might write to Waitrose...

oh thats handy to know, when you say grape bags do you mean the bag the loose grapes come in the the 1 with the zipper on

morg_monster

yes that's right. But I cut the zipper off first just in case!

ArmchairTycoon

C_Ronaldo wrote: »

Yes i agree with you, but it would take alot of shoppers to do this for the supermarkets to take notice,

Well we all have to start somewhere, as I said previously this tactic was used in Germany by Greenpeace and was sucessful so it isn't impossible, no doubt when some councils start charging seperately for waste collection this will become a more appealing option.

ArmchairTycoon

geordie_joe wrote: »

Well that would annoy the h*ll out of me if I used carrier bags and took them back to the store to be recycled. One non recyclable item in the bin and the whole lot goes to landfill.



Then again, being supermarkets they may just take the easiest and cheapest way out. Remove the recycling bins and replace them with a sign saying they have had to stop recycling because of some customers misusing it.

I doubt that very much, it would be far too damaging to their image, Supermarkets have spent a lot of money promoting their green credentials, mainly to stave off the Government legislating to force them to do it.

They know too well that if it was compulsory the steps that would be brought in would be more draconian than they would like, and cost them substantially more money than it currently costs them.

Tozer

ArmchairTycoon wrote: »

Personally I put any excessive plastic packaging in the plastic bag bin at my local supermarket, and I encourage everyone else to do so, I don't actually care if my supermarket is able to recycle it or not.

I take the view that if they cannot recycle it it will cost them money to dispose of it, if all their customers adopted my attitude it would force them to reevaluate how much unecessary packaging they put on products, it is getting silly now, my local supermarket plastic wrap all their fresh produce.

And before anyone suggests that supermarkets will increase their prices to cover their increased costs it won't, it really isn't an option for them given they are constantly striving to reduce prices compared to other retailers.

So if you want to start making a difference bring back your excessive packaging and make it the supermarkets problem to dispose of it.

The same practice was adopted a few years ago in Germany, promoted by Greenpeace and it forced supermarkets to radically change how they packaged goods.

NO!!!

Sorry but that is the wrong approach. Recyclable material is assessed by the batch of material and the amount of "contamination" in it. If it is above the accepted level of contamination then the WHOLE batch is rejected by the recycling processor thereby destroying any advantage for the people who have actually put the right stuff at the right time.

By way of example, our local council had stacks of paper rejected for recycling on the basis that it contained too much card and non-recyclable paper (Tetrapak cartons for example). It all ended up as landfill as it would not be economical to sort it.

So please try and put the right recyclable material into the right recepticles.

Your suggestion that the supermarkets will pay someone to sort it is not correct. They will pass it on to the recyclers who may well put it in landfill.

Ben84

Sainsburys emailed me back today to confirm that their in store plastic bag recycling bins can take all low-density polyethylene plastic films.

The correct bags/films will often be maked with a number four in the triangle logo, usually with either LDPE or LD-PE below.

However, I have found lots of LDPE that isn't marked, but can still be recycled if you identify it. LDPE is a soft easily stretched plastic, that feels and tears unlike others, so it's fairly easy to tell the difference if you find some known examples that are marked and feel/tear them. It's commonly used for bread bags and frozen goods like chopped vegetables, or potato bags.

The plastics that are without a doubt not LDPE and can't be recycled are those that are hard, difficult to tear and do not stretch. Also metallic type films, like those used to package most crisps. Plastics marked degradable or compostable shouldn't be put in the recycling either. Some of them will be LDPE, but the degradable agents added to them make them unsuitable for recycling.

If I'm uncertain about something, I'll just throw it away in the bin. It's better to do this than cause contamination. If it's a product I buy often, I'll contact the company who sell it and ask them what it's made of. Asking more of these questions should encourage companies to better label their packaging too.