Have you heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch? It's an area of marine debris in the central North Pacific Ocean that is highly concentrated with suspended plastic and other debris that have been trapped by the currents of the North Pacific Gyre.
It is so disturbing to think that a great swath of ocean is filled with debris that won't decompose for at least 100 years. I recycle all the plastics our recycling program says it will take, which are containers marked with the #1, #2 and #5. I end up throwing plastic caps and lids that aren't marked with those numbers in the garbage, where they could potentially end up in the Great Garbage Patch.
This dilemna is why I'm so excited about the recycling program Aveda, a company that manufactures natural hair and skin care products, has recently launched. Aveda is building a recycling program for plastic bottle caps in which caps are collected at its salons and stores, as well as schools, and then sent by Aveda to its recycler, where the material is recycled into new caps and containers. Aveda says it has worked with its suppliers to develop ways to make new caps and containers from the recycled caps.
8 comments:
what a fantastic program, thnaks for letting us know about it, i will need to check it out,
Wow! That is great to hear. I, too, feel guilty about throwing caps away.
Here's something I don't get: why don't we REUSE bottles and caps in the U.S.? In Mexico you buy Coke in a bottle that has obviously been around a while. Why crush down a glass bottle or jar, melt it, and turn it into ANOTHER glass bottle or jar? Glass, especially, is nonporous, so it could easily be sterilized and reused. Companies could just glue their label on.
Anyway, thanks for the great Thrifty Green Thursday tip. I am going to save all those bottle caps from now on!
I don't think we have an Aveda store but I generally save all of our caps (and we buy as few as possible as we get our milk in bulk for the most part and try to bring water bottles from home instead of buying them) for craft projects. My daughter used them for Barbie Bowls, I have used them for oversized checker pieces and put stickers on the insides to make a matching game.
I had no idea about Aveda's recycling program. And I always feel so guilty throwing out caps to containers that can be recycled.
It sickens me when I think of that floating island of plastic. When will people realize that the ocean is not a dump?
Aveda eh?! Interesting to know, thanks for the info! I think there may be one of those salons around here.
I love Aveda (use lots of their products), but didn't know about the bottle cap recycling. Thanks for the tip!
Great tip! I hate throwing caps away and love visiting Aveda. You've given me a legitimate reason to go there and just inhale all the lovely smells wafting around their salon while simultaneously recycling plastic. Thanks for this great tip and for joining us this Thrifty Green Thursday!
That is great news! In the Seattle area, there is a lot more recycling than the east coast, where I'm from. My sister lives in Michigan and when I was visiting her, I cringed as I witnessed her throwing out a glass bottle instead of recycling it. I was very tempted to take it out of the trash so I could take it back to Seattle for recycling!
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