The Bottle Top Recycling Project
At Res.Awesome we are all about showing appreciation for like-minded people in the community, those who are doing their best to tackle Dunedin’s waste flow. The humans at Connections Centre are doing valiant work and we want to use our platform to showcase their amazing community project. Connections Centre is a community-based support centre for people with increased needs due to intellectual and/or physical disabilities. Their kaupapa is to facilitate meaningful and active participation in community life with a holistic and collaborative approach. The folk here work to ensure the most vulnerable members of our community have access to all the resources they need to express themselves creatively. They offer excellent resources, well-qualified staff and a warm welcoming environment.
The Connections Centre crew are always thinking of ways to feed positivity back into the community and their most recent idea has the Res.Awesome team really excited! With the aim of reducing the number of small plastics that end up in our landfills, ocean and natural environment the team at Connections Centre want to buy a plastic shredder to turn our waste into reusable material. Reducing plastic waste is a global problem that needs action from all angles and often ‘starting 'small' in our local area is the best way to move forward.
We want to help raise $19000 for the folks at Connections Centre to build their own small plastic shredder here in Dunedin. This will enable our community to wash and sort plastic lids in order for them to be recycled into more useful products with a longer shelf life. If you want to check out the logistics of the shredder itself, here is a link to the starter kit the Connections Centre have their eye on. The team at Res.Awesome are fully behind The Bottle Top Recycling Project, as it has the potential to feed so much good back into the Ōtepoti Community. The processing of the bottle tops will provide part-time supported employment for a person with a disability. And the collecting of the bottle tops will enable people who attend Connections Centre to engage in a fun, meaningful and community-based activity that is good for people and the planet.
Why is this important?
Currently, global plastic recycling rates average below 10%, with the majority of all plastic produced only ever being used once. Not many people know that the same plastic used to make our milk bottle tops (HDPE No.2) can no longer be chucked into our yellow lidded recycling bins. If plastic lids find their way into our recycling bins, they are unfortunately too small for detection and can contaminate all of our other recycling that has been carefully washed and sorted. With the plastic shredder, bottle tops will be broken down into granules that can be recycled into new products.
There are so many items that can be made from recycled plastic and a handful of notable social enterprises that are putting in the hard yards to make this a reality. Check out The Tiny Plastic Factory in Wellington who use recycled plastic from local businesses to supply manufacturers around New Zealand. Remix Plastic is another sustainability education project that engages people in a conversation around reducing single-use plastic consumption. They share skills and knowledge to empower individuals to make sustainable changes. Their website also stocks a range of awesome products available for purchase that have been created from recycled plastic; ranging from beautiful jewellery to household items. Another one to watch is local environmental artist Tori Clearwater whose passion is zero waste living. Check out her uplifting and beautiful work here.
We are really inspired by the Precious Plastic team, their philosophy sees people in our communities as the key ingredient to sorting out our plastic problem. There is no quick fix, but working together using alternative systems such as the plastic shredder can get us closer to reaching our sustainability goals. The team at Connections Centre have taken matters into their own hands and we are 100% behind them. We want our Res.Awesome followers to get behind them too! To help these guys reach their goal of raising $19,000 we encourage you to donate to their givealittle page. If the purse strings are tight and donating isn’t an option for you, we understand. Instead of donating, use your voice to promote their cause and share their goal with your friends. We know our Res.Awesome readers are concerned about the amount of plastic ending up in our landfills and our natural environment and we can’t wait for you to get behind this project.