To ask you to put aside some festive rubbish (for a good cause)?

[fuzzypicklehead]

You may remember me from last summer's mission to collect ring pulls from fizzy drinks cans. The Quality Street v. Roses thread reminded me that a large volume of MN'ers will have got in large quantities of sweet treats for the holiday season (and may also be enjoying their and feeling generous) Sooo... did you know that your chocolate feasting can do some environmental and social good?

I run an "upcycling" group for adults with SN called Re-Creations Project We teach the group to turn rubbish into cool stuff and sell it to earn money for fun activities (and cake). The materials we use most are Quality Street Wrappers, metal bottle caps and ring pulls from beer/fizzy drink cans. We need way more materials than we can consume ourselves, so we frequently have to enlist help from members of the public to share their rubbish with us. (We did ask Quality Street to help let people know they could recycle wrappers through us, but they said no )

So this Christmas, we're beginning a "Christmas Crap Competition" and asking people to wrap up their sweet wrappers, ring pulls and bottle caps and post them to us. They'll stay out of landfill, and it will make a group of people with learning disabilities really happy. Plus, whoever sends us the most (by 31st January) wins a handmade Quality Street wrapper bracelet.

The materials we use and addresses for posting/dropping are here

Have got people coming round for drinks / games later & 2 tubs of quality street to get through! Will send wrappers later this week!

Hooray!

Great idea. I see on the website you also ask for broken costume jewellery and incomplete puzzles and games. Is it ok to send these, too?

I was wondering about Quality Street's attitude, which seems odd - I wonder if they are sensitive about highlighting the volume of waste packaging that they produce?

Oooh I have eaten the lot and the wrappers away darn it!!! :(

Yep, we always need more of those too!

I'm not sure why Quality Street were hesitant to promote it, but their email response was that they get so many requests for support that they have to focus their efforts on a couple of key charities.

Are Roses wrappers any use? Just opened a tin.

Marking my place for later so I can send you all our wrappers, will also put a link on Facebook twitter etc

Yes, what's the specification for the wrappers, please? My husband has three boxes of cherry liqueurs from Aldi that he's ploughing through. The wrappers look really nice... any good?

Do you use the tops from milk bottles? I mean the plastic ones that come from plastic bottles, not foil ones from the milk man?

I have loads of those because ds's school was collecting them, but then they stopped before I remembered to send them in

And does it have to be quality street wrappers? We only have heros and celebrations and a few lindt red chocolate balls this year!

The best wrappers (for our purposes) are Quality Street and regular tinfoil wrappers. Lindt and Roses are ok too, but they do lose some of their colour with handling. Celebrations and Heroes don't really work well.

We used to collect plastic milk tops, but we were inundated by them really quickly and had to stop. But more and more councils are able to recycle them now. (including ours, which is a relief!)

Ooh, I'm glad you posted, I've been saving ring pulls since the summer!

Can you use foil milk bottle tops from proper old fashioned milk? We have the milkman coming, and get those.

You should try to link this to facebook.

I'm in! We have 3/4 of a jar still to get through so we'll stick the wrappers from those in the post once we're done.

There is a link to FB at the bottom of the Christmas Crap Competition link birds. I've put it on my page OP, I think it's a great idea!

Bump for those who are still working their way through a tin. (Down to just the red and orange here)

What a great idea.

Can I also remind MNetters to take unwanted boxes of chocolates, biscuits etc to their local food bank - if you are hoping to lose a bit of weight you can give the excess food away with a clear conscience. Our food bank also takes half finished tins of sweets (wrapped) as we can re-bag them as small gifts .

Marking my place to share this when I'm at the computer later :)

Awesome idea, Ragwort. Now I know what to do with the flavours I don't like!

Wow, the stuff you make is beautiful!

OH has scoffed all the chocolates, but I will save ring pulls! has a ridiculous Diet Coke addiction

We don't have any QS left and have recycled all my packaging. Excellent idea though. I'm going to do a jar tea light holder as used to do them and this thread's inspired me. I have coloured tissue paper.

Good luck with this it's fantastic

Sorry if I've missed this but are roses wrappers any good? We had a tin given to us that dd has half munched her way through but I can certainly send you the rest once they've been eaten?

What a great idea - have shared on FB; are the finished articles for sale?

I've clicked on your link and posted it on my fb wall. I'll take another look tomorrow.

Okay, further to my previous post I've posted all three links to my fb wall. Hopefully it will help your cause.

Apparently Quality Street are best but Roses are ok, too.