Great Ways To Start Plastic Recycling
I have been plastic recycling like good citizen by putting all my bottles and cartons in the recycling bins. If you're anything like me your bin is probably overflowing with plastic every week! Little did I know that there are only a few types of plastic that are actually being recycled. The rest, it seems, some authorities are just throwing away!
I started to do a little research when I first began trying to reduce the amount of stuff we put in the bin. I'm afraid I knew very little about plastic recycling codes or recycling symbols. Only plastic that is type 1 or 2 is recycled by most councils. Don't get me wrong, this is a lot of junk that is not going to landfill, which has got to be good. The only thing is when you start to sift through your plastic waste, there are quite a few that don't fit these criteria.
I was suprised that this was the case and it inspired me to begin thinking of ways to turn this trash into treasure!
What About the Rest of The Plastic Scrap?
In our house plastic scrap is what fills the bin up! Some councils do collect other types of plastic scrap. Some have recycle centers for yogurt and margarine tubs or tetrapaks. Generally though these are the type of plastic things that we are left with. Just in one week we had collected various
- Clear plastic meat trays
- Containers and bottles (not type 1 or 2 plastic)
- Plastic bottle lids
- Plastic wrap from veg etc.
- Plastic rice/noodle pouches
- Coloured plastic veg trays
- Margarine tubs
- Baby Wipe pouches
- Balls that you put the laundry liquid in!
Trash to Treasure?
So here are my recycling efforts so far :) I hope that you enjoy these projects. I certainly had fun building all these useful items and the best thing is that most of them are totally free!
They are just made with the plastic scrap we all have lying around the house. Some of the plastic recycling projects have a basic design that uses nothing other than recycled materials. Sometimes there is an option for you to add some form of decoration that is not recycled. This is entirely personal taste.
Waste plastics this really inspires me to keep as much as possibe out of landfill by reusing it!
