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.

Friday’s tip was about recycling those little bits of plastic, like bottle caps.  They say that in the USA, recyclers don’t really want these caps because they are too small for their automated processes, they can get mixed in with the wrong kind of plastic, and, if attached, keep unwanted air in the bottles.

While my local council here does take them (but do they actually get recycled?), that’s not the case all over the UK.  If yours doesn’t, the bottle caps page at the ReduceReuseRecycle might offer some help, although the options were extremely limited when I checked.

Ideal Bite claims Aveda stores will start taking them, which is really cool except not yet true in the UK…but I called and they said they were looking into it so that’s good news.

Most alarming was the link Ideal Bite included to the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s site on the Albatross. Apparently in the North Pacific, 40% of Laysan albatross chicks die each year because their bellies are full of plastic (much of that plastic comes from land first).  That’s far more than the occasional bird dying.  Click “A Deadly Diet” on the Monterey Bay Aquarium site to see what came out of one bird. Once in Cornwall we watched a seagull down a practically full packet of Extra Strong Mints.  Ok, I know this country has a lot of seagulls, but thinking about what the Extra Strong Mints did to that bird’s stomach makes me feel sick.

I’ll admit that sometimes the convenience of plastic does win me over.  However, it’s images like these that really make me think twice.

Layson Albatross photo by Tatters:).

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.

 PET or PETE: polyethylene terephthalate.  Used in drink bottles (clear or lightly coloured).  Easily recycled.  Per Treehugger, doesn’t leach.

PET water bottles were the subject of a scare implying that reusing water bottles resulted in DEHA (a suspected carcinogen) leaching into beverages. While it got a lot of coverage, it now seems that the evidence for this claim was pretty shaky (some reports state that this type of plastic doesn’t even contain DEHA). Health advocates will caution that there isn’t enough research to know the effects of plastic, and ya gotta wonder about those bottles when they get heated up, but even Treehugger says that PET plastics don’t leach.  (Sources:  Snopes, U Florida summary, About.com’s Urban Legends,  The Free Library)

HDPE: high density polyethylene. Used in milk jugs, trash bags, detergent and shampoo bottles and some yogurt pots (cloudy or white). Easily recycled.  Doesn’t leach.

 PVC: Vinyl or polyvinyl chloride. Used in some cling wraps, some cooking-oil bottles and squash bottles (with handles), meat packaging, childrens toys, fashion accessories, shower curtains, office binders, detergent and spray bottles.  Limited recyclability. Per Treehugger, it’s “a bad, bad plastic.” Soft PVC (UPVC) can leach phthalates (an hormone disruptor) and off-gas chemicals into the air.

 LDPE: low-density polyethylene. Used in shopping/carrier bags, some cling wraps, baby bottles, reusable drink & food containers.  Recycleable in some areas (not generally recycled in the UK, although some supermarkets offer carrier bag recycling). Per Treehugger, it doesn’t leach.

PP: Polypropylene. Used in baby bottles, yogurt and takeout containers, reusable food and drink containers (e.g., Tupperware and Rubbermaid-types), drinking straws. Sometimes recyclable (not generally recycled in the UK).  Per Treehugger, it doesn’t leach.

PS: Polystyrene. Used in takeout food containers, egg containers, plastic cutlery, CD cases, Styrofoam. Leaches styrene (a neurotoxin and possible human carcinogen). Banned in Portland Oregon and San Francisco. Not often recyclable.

Everything else.

PC: Polycarbonate. Used in Nalgene water bottles (although Nalgene has now switched from polycarbonate) and baby bottles. Leaches the plasticizer bisphenol A (BPA – a hormone disruptor that mimics estrogen) when heated (see this Time article).  

PLA: polyactide – (one type of) bioplastics. Not easily recycled.  May contain toxins so can only be composted commercially.

Compostable Plastic – according to Ideal Bite, it’s nontoxic and “breaks down as fast as paper in compost.”  My own research of a Sainsbury’s compostable plastic bag disproves this, although it did eventually break down, and it is better than putting it in the bin.

Sources:  TreeHugger, Planet Green, Ideal Bite, Ecology Center