Storing soft plastic recycling

[Telemichus]

We’re really pushed for space, soft plastic doesn’t get collected by the council, so we don’t have a bin for it, and not all the supermarkets have collection points, so would need to store at home until we’re going to the right place.
How do you keep yours? I want it quite contained, so a hanging bag won’t do I don’t think, s it will pop out of the top. I suppose maybe a drawstring bag?
thoughts welcome.

I have the shrinker device linked to above. What I didn’t realise when I ordered it is that it is shipped from Australia! Not only did it take ages to arrive, but I think I might have caused my damage to the environment by ordering it than I did by recycling the soft plastics! Whilst it is effective, it is smaller than I anticipated and I can pretty much fill it in just while unloading a supermarket delivery (ours seems to put all meat products in a plastic bag and then I decant the berries & things). Yes, it does squash stuff down by no more than you could yourself if you had a container and just squished stuff into it!

Punnets aren’t soft plastic and don’t go in the soft plastic recycling. My council (most councils?) collect them as part of the normal recycling.

I responded earlier that we use bread bags. We used to take them to Tesco for recycling, but after reading numerous articles about how little of it gets recycled we actually just bin it now.

We still fill the bread bags to compact the soft plastic so that our main bin doesn't get as full, which makes it still worthwhile for us.

I agree. I've seen so many reports about plastics and textiles that we put for recycling being exported overseas which end up as ginormous mountains of rubbish so that in effect all we've done is used a developing country as a landfill site.

I meticulously wash and sort my recycling but I've lately started to wonder if I'm really wasting my time and am just causing a problem for another country which may not have the resources to deal with what we send them. Maybe I'm better sticking it in my black bin so it gets burnt to produce electricity. Not environmentally friendly but is it any worse than what happens now with plastics etc?

Well perhaps I won’t bother then if it’s all going the same way, although I get your point about compressing. I do squish the bin bags a bit, although DH doesn’t bother.

You see this is the sort of over thinking that I do! But a useful review thank you

I read an article - in the Guardian iirc - where a journalist had put trackers in 40 bundles of soft plastic waste that they then left in collection points in Tesco & Sainsburys. The bundles were tracked as travelling over 15,000 miles and 8 of the bundles ended up in Turkey. I think 80% of the soft plastic bundles ended up being incinerated.

I still take mine religiously to Tesco every week, although it's probably pointless really. I try to buy stuff that's not overpackaged but that can be quite hard to do, especially on a limited budget. It would be lovely to go to a greengrocer and buy 4 apples etc that aren't packed in a plastic bag, but there are no shops like that near to where I live.

Ours don't. The only plastic they take are 'bottles' milk/shampoo/bleach anything really, but not punnets, yogurt pots, anything like that

weirdly they do take aerosols.

Absolutely right there with you!

I just want the truth so I can make my own decisions over how to dispose of stuff.

Given how it's all squished in the collection trucks, I honestly don't think you squishing is going to make any difference.

Oh, no the squish is to fit it into the black bin lol

True. But by taking it to the supermarket it becomes their problem to dispose of it. The more hassle / expense it causes them, hopefully the more inspired they’ll be to take steps to reduce the amount of packaging they use in the first place.

👍🏻🤣🤣

Thanks for this! I was really wondering what the use was of storing and recycling soft plastics after reading the article another poster mentioned above a while ago. It’s always the first thing I give up on when life feels overwhelming. But this is a great point!!

Posted twice sorry

Ok so decision made. Anything plastic, like strawberry punnets, that our council doesn't take I'm going to continue to put in Tesco soft plastics. A) make it their problem & hopefully they'll be more incentivised to find a way of recycling them! & b) it goes to energy incineration rather than landfill.

Another thing to consider is that things change all the time. They didn't recycle bubble wrap before but they do now, they're finding different ways to recycle different types of plastic, so it's probably best to keep highlighting the plastics that need to be either eliminated or recycled.

when you can.

I'm only able to right now as my neighbour takes it with hers. If she didn't it would be going in the general waste as I'm unable to get it to a store.

It’s a rollercoaster! I’m back to finding storage options to make it the supermarkets problem so they reduce packaging!

I’d look at the compressor thing in the past and winced at the price and how far it would have to come. Couldn’t find anything comparable so dismissed.

that said I’ve had a tour of our waste recycling centre a few months ago and all the soft plastic is saved, compressed and added to the ‘normal’ waste to help it burn.

According to the M&S website they take back their soft plastic delivery bags for recycling, but does anyone happen to know whether they'll take other companies' at the same time? I don't want to lug myself all the way to town if they won't take them all.

I’ve got a Wholly Shrink. Expensive, but does the job! We had been storing them in bread roll
bags, so I decanted about 5 full ones into the WS and there was still space.

I've got a two tier kitchen bin on wheels, with a pedal bin bottom that I use for rubbish, and the top tier I use to shove soft plastics into a bread bag

I took recycling to our local "tip" yesterday and although there were places to leave plastic bottles and hard plastics, there was nothing there for soft plastics. The neighbouring council tells householders to put soft plastics in their recycling bin and they're then sorted for recycling.

Try the Squishbin from John Lewis. Made in the UK from recycled plastic. I find that it takes more than a week of our soft plastics.

Put a bread bag in an empty pringles tube to act as a liner. Stuff the soft plastics down inside (a round empty shampoo bottle fits well to push it all down). When the tube is full, tie the bread bag up and take it to the shop to recycle.