These are my notes from my initial meeting with BANES when they came to the college.
Things that BANES recycle: Paper, cans, aerosols, oil, plastic, glass, glasses, shoes, clothes, mobiles, and even batteries. There are very few things that are non-recyclable, but these include bubble wrap, plastic bags, cling film, and black plastic. 43% of all the rubbish that BANES collect is recycled, which is a very high percentage in comparison to other recycling companies. Rubbish amount has increased in time, because more is used and more materials have been invented, such as plastic is only 50 years old. Another problem is that the nearest landfill site is in Buckinghamshire, so they made a new one sited in Shortwoods, so that it saves on carbon and fuel from the train as it would have been travelling over 100 miles. However we are running out of places to create landfills and eventually we will have nowhere at all. More issues include things such as climate change, as it is being affected by the release of Methane gases from landfills, which is 20% more dangerous than Carbon Dioxide.
Currently through taxes we are paying £48 per year for the landfills, but there will be an increase of £8 per extra tonne of rubbish they have to dispose of, and the council hope this will act as a deterrent. Some companies are trying to make a difference in recycling to help the environment. Such as Coca-Cola are using thinner plastic, and Kenco are using recyclable refillable sachets of coffee beans to put in a pot at home, to save on materials. As a seasonal solution, many companies and supermarkets made Easter egg packaging recyclable. Many people blame the supermarket as most use more packaging than necessary, but nobody in particular is to blame as everyone is at fault.
BANES believe that the government needs to broadcast and advertise the importance of recycling, as at the moment they only tell you the obvious things that most people are already aware of, such as the recyclability of glass, paper and cans. A fact that not many people are aware of is that all British Newspapers are made from 100% recycled paper. There is also a campaign for not wasting any food called Love Food Hate Waste that is soon to be introduced. It will be a separate bin for any waste food the household may have.
Between BANES and our group, we discussed how an advertisement making all audiences interested in recycling, and making it more appealing would be the most effective plan.
Lynne Scragg from Bath College spoke to us about the state of recycling the college do. In her opinion the college does not do enough recycling, but the aim of what they do recycle is sustainability. She believes that the college needs more material specific bins in certain parts of the college, such as unused/waste wood in the carpentry rooms, plastic bins for the packaging that hairdressers use from products in the hair and beauty block, and waste paper bins by photocopiers and printers, as so many mistakes are made and the paper is not needed.
Lynne thinks that the college uses a lot of plastic and polystyrene cups in places such as staff rooms, but there is nowhere but the general rubbish bin to throw them away, but if there were specific bins that people would use them. Between Lynne and our group we decided the best way to advertise recycling throughout the college would be to have a recycling feature page in next year’s student hand book.
This could be a poster trying to make recycling appeal to young people, or a leaflet of useful information. Or it could be an advertisement for a recycling company from one of their existing campaigns, any of these I think would be effective.
I was absent when my group was visiting the Bristol Scrapstore but these are some notes I collected from the people who went, and from the Scrapstore website. The Scrapstore is aimed at children to try and make them interested in recycling, and the focus is that children can make waste material play things. The Scrapstore also sells a variety of products at low prices, such as a wide range of paints and material dyes, and other child related products such as stickers, foam, stencils etc. Some ideas I have for the Scrapstore, are to create an advert about reusing and recycling and the Scrapstores involvement, clothes bins in colleges for old clothes and shoes, sculptures in the public eye made from recycled material to advertise the Scrapstore, or a B movie using scrap material for props etc.
We went to visit someone who worked in Oxfam, and he described the whole process of turning donated clothes into new products. This particular Oxfam was a boutique and so the process was more refined as they only sold higher quality products. Firstly of the clothes that were donated they could only use about half of them, because the rest were too damaged or stained to be revived. They then sent these unusable clothes off for further recycling so they could be broken down into their original materials and buttons etc. The clothes they could use were washed and cleaned so they looked new, and then sometimes were paired with matching jewellery also donated, or sometimes made by fashion students etc. Sometimes the clothing was broken down and taken apart to make new products, e.g the pockets of jeans and jackets could be attached to a bag to give it a new design.
The main aim of Oxfam is to help poverty in third world countries, which is where the name came from, as the original shop was in ‘Ox’ford in aid of a ‘fam’ine. The shop has become the best-known recycling store, and most other related shops got the idea from Oxfam. What we were going to do for Oxfam is try to make new products out of the old clothes they could not sell, to save even more material and increase the recyclability of the material.
