Sadly, a lot of the waste that assume is recycled gets shipped abroad to be buried or burned. 3% of the waste in England alone is incinerated to generate power. It’s referred to as recycling because it’s converting energy in the plastic into energy for our homes, but this releases greenhouse gases and even the most sophisticated incinerators will release environmental toxins.
Plastic is pretty much unavoidable and while it is a ubiquitous material, when used correctly it performs well, does a good job, and lasts a good many years. At the end of its time though, it should be possible to recycle it. However, unless there is demand for recycled goods, it will just be sent to landfill or incinerators.
Just as it is difficult to get printers to use recycled paper, it is difficult to get manufacturers to use recycled plastic. The recycled material is good, but each batch can have some variance, and if you want consistency it’s easier (and usually cheaper) to use virgin plastic. I insisted on recycled plastic for the Chimney Sheep components from the outset. There were some issues at the beginning with the threaded parts breaking. We had the whole lot completely redesigned to make them stronger (this takes one sentence to write but in reality it took a lot of time, trouble and considerable expense!).
As we’ve grown our product range, I’ve sought out products that we can have made, or that other companies make, that use recycled materials. The tricky one was finding food-safe recycled plastic for our Go Outside picnic range. You would have thought that with so many food containers going into recycling, this would be easy, but believe me it was not. I’m pleased to say that now we have an excellent range of high quality plastic tableware made of 100% recycled plastic. It lasts for years and years and is fully recyclable again at the end of its use.
Some plastics are difficult to separate and recycle. There’s more to plastic wood than meets the eye – it’s made using a process that carefully melts different plastics at different melting points without scorching any, blends them into a hot goo, and extrudes them into plastic “lumber”. Our plastic wood composter weighs 56kg, and contains the equivalent of 31,864 bottle tops AND 336kg of CO₂.
Of course, closing the loop doesn’t just involve recycling plastic. As I’ve said many a time, there’s no point in cutting down a perfectly good tree that’s been growing for 80 years just to make loo paper. We’ve got a whole range of recycled paper products, including loo roll, kitchen roll, and napkins; also some gorgeous recycled paper cards.
We also recycle jute coffee sacks into mulch mats, cushions and door draught excluders.
We can make a huge difference to the planet by our shopping habits. Reducing waste is important in the first place. Then recycling our waste. And finally, creating demand for recycled products by closing the loop. We try to make this easier for you by curating an increasing range of product made of recycled materials. Have a look at what we’ve got here: https://chimneysheep.co.uk/collections/recycled-things.
I love to hear your feedback and product suggestions. If there are any amazing / useful / interesting / lovely products made of recycled materials that you’ve come across that would fit will in our online store, I would be delighted to hear about them.
