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Our team can offer helpful advice and information on products suitable for recycling

We have spent many years developing our range of recyclable products to help minimise our impact to the environment. We are also very conscious about recovering waste within our manufacturing operations to send for recycling. We help customers to reduce their consumption of polythene where possible by re-designing their packaging products to high strength thinner materials, or configurations of packaging that do not use as much material.
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As part of our commitment to help protect the environment, build customer trust and meet our legal obligations we are certified to the ISO 14001:2015 environmental management standard. This will help demonstrate to interested parties that we are committed to reducing our environmental impact.

Working with the Chamber Low Carbon Programme to help reduce CO2 emissions

Our long-term goal to reduce CO2 emissions started in 2018 when we started planning for future growth. We also had to consider moving premises as we had outgrown our previous business premises. The plan we set out was to order new machinery to replace 4 old machines which took 8 operators to run them, and buy new machinery which could increase production with less staff. The new machinery we purchased had to be located in new premises which thank fully we managed to source and move into within a short amount of time, although construction work had to be completed to build offices etc. The new machinery and new larger premises allow for future growth with the peace of mind knowing our energy consumption will not be as high as it used to be. The newly built well insulated building doesn’t require as much heating and our upgraded electrical installations are all low energy. Simple things like sensor lighting and new lower energy compressors helped reduce energy consumption.

We have recently committed to purchasing more machinery which will allow us to convert more products in-house, without the need to send material on hauliers to third party companies for conversion. We have recently agreed to work with Lancs Chamber of Commerce and signed up to the Chamber Low Carbon Programme to document our carbon footprint and start our journey towards destination net zero.

Recycling

Recycling is a big part of both our product range and our culture. We do all we can to promote recycling both in the workplace but also when talking to customers and helping them choose a product which is most suitable for them. We have developed product lines which are 100% recyclable such as our temporary protective packaging products.

Society needs to stop thinking of plastic (or in our case polythene) as a waste problem or harm to the environment and realise its potential to be a renewable source. We need to help educate users on how to make their products recyclable and reduce waste, contributing towards fuelling a circular economy.

A circular economy is restorative and regenerative by design. This means materials constantly flow around a ‘closed loop’ system, rather than being used once and then discarded. In the case of plastic, this means simultaneously keeping the value of plastics in the economy, without leakage into the natural environment. But this is easier said than done. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation reported that more than 40 years after the launch of the first universal recycling symbol, just 14% of the plastic packaging used globally is recycled, while 40% ends up in landfill and 32% in ecosystems (with the remaining 14% used for incineration or energy recovery). To move society away from the “take, make, dispose” mindset that has long-informed business models, a fundamental rethink is required. This will involve improving recycling, promoting reuse, creating a market for recycled materials and redesigning products with end of life in mind.

 

https://www.sustainability.com/thinking/creating-a-circular-economy-for-plastics/

Our Production Waste

Most of the product we supply are made to order and although we work hard to minimise product waste, we collect production scrap in cages, segregate clear and mixed colours then bale our scrap so it can be sent for regranulating into new material.

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All of our card and paper is also collected in cages and dropped off at a local recycling charity who sell it to be recycled into new.

Avoiding the use of degradable additives

There are many benefits to promoting the use of recycled and/or recyclable materials, instead of creating single use degradable products which should not re-enter recycle streams. Efforts should be made to promote the use of products that have been made from recycled material or can be recycled at the end of the product life cycle.

Biodegradable plastics are made from the same materials as conventional petroleum-based plastics, but with even more chemicals added. The additional chemicals cause the plastic to break down more rapidly when exposed to air and light. The majority of modern biodegradable plastics fragment rather than degrade due to the addition of oxidising agents (found in “oxo-degradable plastics”). By fragmenting rather than degrading, they break into small pieces, which can pollute soils, increasing the risk of ingestion for animals and ending up in our oceans and waterways.

Download our degradable fact sheet

If you need polythene recycling advice, or want to know more about our processes, please feel free to contact our support team.

CALL US 01253 340190