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July 2011
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The hoodie that came from the binBy Jeremy Callaghan
At St Augustine, we have been recycling material since 2010 and I thought it might be interesting to do some research into what happens with the stuff we chuck in the bins on campus. The first thing that happens is that too much of it annoys and inconveniences people. If you are collecting glass or plastic for a recycling company, you don’t want to sort through the maggoty remains of convenience food to get to the material you need; nor do you want to put aside wrappings, polystyrene or any of the other kinds of household rubbish that is not yet recyclable here. Our recycling bins are clearly marked for the only material they should receive; as a community it would be very helpful if we could all respect these designations. Recycling in Motion Ltd (the company we use) recycles all kinds of plastic materials, although in practice the essential items are bottles and containers. Every Friday, their vehicle comes onto the Campus and collects the stuff placed in the 21 large blue cube-shaped bins and transports it to the factory in San Juan. The material is hand-fed into mincers where it is converted into a confetti-like heap before being shipped in large bags to companies in India and China. There it is processed into a variety of useful commodities, in addition to hoodies. These include translucent plastic folders, plastic rulers, mouse pads, lunch boxes, garden furniture, shoelaces, trash cans, shoes, patio decking, tote bags, plastic mugs, housewares, key rings, pet dishes, notebook covers, coasters, electric cover plates, cushions, fly swats, picnic blankets and …well, I guess human inventivity provides the only limit. Unlike plastics, all the glass bottles we send for recycling get turned into – yet more glass bottles. We send them on their way by depositing them in some 12 green drums on the main campus, a further six at Mt Hope, or four larger skips in strategic locations (Milner Hall, Medical Sciences, Life Sciences and the Staff Club). In theory, when the drums are three-quarters full, someone calls Carib Glass (the recycling company) to collect the material, but this works less than well in practice (people are shy of ringing the number clearly painted on the drum) and precautionary collecting tends to be the (wasteful) norm. The glass takes the short journey to the works in Champs Fleurs to be made into new bottles, many of which are sold on to Carib Brewery to be filled with the divine nectar that sometimes goes by the mundane name of beer. Carib Glass has a little leaflet on ‘Recycling Facts’ with some interesting information, including the observation that if recycled glass is substituted for half of the raw material (in the manufacture of glass) waste is reduced by more than 80%. Again, recycling “causes 20% less air pollution and 50% less water pollution than when a new bottle is made from raw materials”. Bottles and jars are 100% recyclable. RIM and Carib Glass measure what they collect. Since November last, 2,475 lbs of our plastics have been minced in San Juan, and for the year 2010, 3,435 kilogrammes of glass suffered the metric equivalent of the same fate, incidentally earning us about $1,000 in revenue. There is much to be done, of course. An education campaign is a necessity; a more sophisticated approach to depositing recyclables is urgent; and what about other recyclables: batteries, printer cartridges and so on? But a start has been made. And it might just be, as you huddle into your hoodie on a cold day at Queen’s Park Oval, sipping a Carib, that you had a hand (or should that be two?) in making it. –Jeremy Callaghan is a member of the Environmental Committee at the St. Augustine Campus. |
In 2009, Ireland won the 6 Nations Championship, the Triple Crown and the Grand Slam (we are talking rugby union here, dear reader). I was rather chuffed, therefore, when my sons gave me a ‘hoodie’, with the shamrock and all, as a Christmas gift: it was smart, emerald green, acceptably tribal, cheap (I discovered the price later at the supermarket) and made of plastic bottles!