eco-label.org.uk - Recycling Labels

The British Retail Consortium (BRC) in March 2009 released a tangible Recycling Label, it is industry standard and will replace a myriad of confusing and misleading labels that have been use over the past decades.

The labelling is divided into three categories:

• ‘widely recycled’ is where 65% or more of UK local authorities have collection facilities for that packaging type in their area;
• ‘check local recycling’ is where 15% to 65% of UK local authorities have collection facilities for that packaging type in their area; and
• ‘not currently recycled’ is where less than 15% of UK local authorities have collection facilities for that packaging type in their area

The term ‘collection facilities’ means the recycling collection service from your home and/or ‘bring banks’ that you find in supermarket car parks or at recycling centres.

Recycling schemes vary across the country so to help you find out what you can and can’t recycle in your area, check the ‘postcode locator’ on www.recyclenow.com.

For more information visit the one pack recycling website:

http://www.onpackrecyclinglabel.org.uk/

Recycling Plastic - Eco Labels:

My goodness there are soooooo many types of plastic.

There are about 50 different groups of plastics, with hundreds of different varieties. All types of plastic are recyclable. To make sorting and thus recycling easier, the American Society of Plastics Industry developed a standard marking code to help consumers identify and sort the main types of plastic. These types and their most common uses are:

	PET	Polyethylene terephthalate - Fizzy drink bottles and oven-ready meal trays.
	HDPE	High-density polyethylene - Bottles for milk and washing-up liquids.
	PVC	Polyvinyl chloride - Food trays, cling film, bottles for squash, mineral water and shampoo.
	LDPE	Low density polyethylene - Carrier bags and bin liners.
	PP	Polypropylene - Margarine tubs, microwaveable meal trays.
	PS	Polystyrene - Yoghurt pots, foam meat or fish trays, hamburger boxes and egg cartons, vending cups, plastic cutlery, protective packaging for electronic goods and toys.
	OTHER	Any other plastics that do not fall into any of the above categories. - An example is melamine, which is often used in plastic plates and cups.

Recycling Aluminium

Aluminium was one of the first materials that became viable to recycle. This is because it is so energy intensive to make, and energy costs money. Production of brand new aluminium metal from ore creates 11.46 kg of CO2 for every 1 kilo of aluminium, by contrast recycled aluminium only creates 1.69 kg of CO2 per 1kg produced. But why is this?

Bauxite is the ore (rock) from which aluminium is extracted. Typically 1 tonne of bauxite will give you 1/4 tonne of aluminium.

The electricity used to produce aluminium is relatively high. 0.5kg of aluminium requires 6-8 kilowatt-hours of electrical energy.

So by recycling a drinks can you are saving all of the energy that is used to process the aluminium from a rock to a metal.

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At present in the UK depending on what product you are buying between 18 and 55% of the aluminium will be recycled.
This is because there is not enough recycled aluminium to meet demand from industry and as such recycled aluminium is blended with virgin aluminium.

Recycling Paper

To the left is a label off of the back of some recycled printer paper it clearly shows the benefits of recycling.

And how it save water electricity and carbon emmisions.

This particular recycled paper i accredited with numerous green labeling schemes as shown below, details of manufacturers and stockiest of this paper are also details below.

This particular paper is manufactured by Stenbeis of Germany, and is made from post consumer waste, paer and card that would normally go to landfill.

I bought mine from the Small Green Stationary Shop. Which sells various low impact stationary products.