Have you ever heard the term REDcycle?

I hadn’t until very recently I must admit when one of our lovely regular beach clean attendees spoke of it.

REDcyling is an initiative that takes soft plastics including food wrappers & turns them into a material which can then be used to manufacture new products like outdoor furniture.

I’d heard of taking your plastic shopping bags back but not food packaging.  Soft Plastics, especially plastic shopping bags, often get added to the home recycling bin but when sent to the recycling centre are way too fine for the machine to process, jamming them & spoiling the whole batch.  If you see neighbour’s bundling up their recycling into a plastic shopping bag, enlighten them.  I’m still working on my own neighbour’s with this task!

There is no doubt that food wrappers account for a large percentage of house-hold waste so taking these items & diverting them from landfill is absolutely brilliant in my opinion.

How to get started

Stash away those soft plastics & drop them at the REDcycle collection point at your local supermarket – simple!

Check out your closest point here.

What plastic packaging can I REDcycle?

Now you would think I have given the whole Plastic free living thing I would have known about this long ago, but I must admit it’s easy to caught up in day to day living & miss these gems.

This is why I love doing Beach clean-ups so much.  You have the opportunity to meet like-minded passionate people within the community where information is shared & it inspires you all over again.  So Mav, a big warm thanks to you for this insight!!

To date 150 Million pieces of plastic, or enough to circle Australia twice, has been diverted from landfill since the program was launched in 2012.  A fantastic effort both by the RED group, its partners & of course you guys for taking the time to do it!!

So add this new gem to your list if you haven’t already, it has the potential to make a really big impact.  Of course there is no substitute for stemming the flow at the source by refusing single use plastics or holding manufacturers responsible for the type of packaging they use but for many of us we do what can where we can & that’s the most important thing of all.

Every little bit counts.

Big hugs to you all

S xx