As the Energy Savings Trust website says, “How refreshing – a campaign that wants you to do less, not more!”

The website has lots of great information and resources (I particularly like their “How it is recycled?” pages) and they are challenging everyone to make a pledge to start wasting less. 

After my recent posts, I decided it would be fitting to pledge to “recycle bottles and cans while I’m out and about.”  Along with more typically suggestions, they also have pledges such as ”choose peat-free compost” and “go waste free for a day.”

Looking for home recycling solutions? Check out Homerecycling.co.uk, which I found through their site.  You can also find a complete guide to all the recycling symbols, as well as the fabulous Oliver Heath in a video on recycling.

Recycle Now is run by WRAP (Waste and Resource Action Programme), which is apparently funded by DEFRA.

In 2006 in the UK, only 20% of household plastic bottles get recycled and 13 billion plastic bottles are disposed of each year.  Now, I had to research this a bit, because I had heard that “billion” in the UK is different from “billion” in the US.  However, accordingto Wikipedia, since 1974 the UK government abandoned the “long scale” definition of billion, which was a million million, for the “short scale” (“American”) definition of 1,000 million. That means that in the UK 2,600,000,000 bottles are not recycled each year. (Sourse: Recoup, Recycle-more.co.uk)

Worldwide, 60 billion tons of plastic are produced each year, and less than 5% is recycled.  (Source: Project Kaisei)  Where does it all go?  Seemingly everywhere, given how hard it is to get away from plastic litter, which takes forever to break down. Obviously a fair amount goes into landfills. A fair amount gets eaten by animals, too.  

What really made me reconsider my plastic use was hearing about the Plastic Vortex in the Pacific Ocean, which is supposedly twice the size of Texas and, with an estimated 4,000,000 tons of plastic, contains six times more particles of plastic than plankton.

What really amazes me is that a group of people have gotten together to start filtering the ocean. Seriously.  I’m so impressed by someone who can wake up one day and say to her or himself, “I think I’ll tackle the biggest area of litter in the world.”  Project Kaisei: Capturing the Plastic Vortex will be filmed and documented by National Geographic.

Update Sept-09:  Scientists have returned from exploring the “Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch.” More here. Project Kaisei Flickr Stream is here.

Photo by Von Floto.

The entry on Bottle Alley Glass has got me thinking about glass recycling. 

Many moons ago I was travelling in Amsterdam and toured the Heineken brewery.  I remember hearing about how, with a little cleaning out, they could reuse the bottles something like 17 times (I’ve probably grossly over-exaggerated that figure, but I can’t find anything to verify it and that’s the number that sticks in my head, so please let me know if you know something different).  When at university (or college as Americans say) in Minnesota, we would buy cases of beer and then return all the bottles to get a deposit from the liquor store. The bottles would then be reused by the manufacturer.  How did we get so far away from that? Does anyone still do it?

A few weeks ago on Grand Designs (I do love that show), they spotlighted a couple making an earth ship house (made from old tires/tyres and dirt) which included glass bottles embedded into the wall.  Kevin gave them a lot of grief about that…it was more hippie than grand design, but even so, as it does everywhere, the glass added some nice sparkle to the space.

Taken to the extreme, in one of the many internet tangents I get myself on, I came across this Buddhist temple in Thailand made entirely of glass bottles…

Photo by Cheryl Kempton.