Good news from Robert Wiseman dairies. They have been thinking about the long term effect of bottle tops in the waste stream and have decided to remove colourant from their milk bottle caps to make them more recyclable: the new tinted caps also enable them to increase the level of recycled plastic in their bottles. This is a great example of a big company making commercial sense on recycling.
The dairy industry alone uses two billion plastic bottle tops a year in the UK. Add to that drinks bottles, pharmaceutical containers, deodorants, cleaning products - even your Pringle "pop" top and you have billions upon billions of caps each year which could be collected and reformed into something new.
So surely local authorities are making the most of this versatile recycled waste stream already?
There are 232 local authorities in the UK, most of whom collect bottles but not bottle tops. How can this be so, when all bottle reprocessing plants separate off the caps and send them to other recyclers? The sad fact is that if you look at local authority waste collections you would struggle to find two that operate in the same way.
Surely it's time for a single local authority waste strategy and a nationwide code on what we should and should not collect? A code which communicates the consistent message that plastic is a multi use, reusable raw material that is great in the hands of recyclers, but not very good in landfill. Here at Iplas, plastic bottle tops are one of the most important raw materials that we use to make into many different types of high quality recycled plastic products.
So well done Robert Wiseman: good recyclable materials getting into the hands of the recycling aware and well intentioned British public. Now it's over to the local authorities to get it back into the hands of the recyclers.
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