Wallpapered Rubbins Bins from Re-Nest

At the close of another week here are some of the cool/interesting things we have found from around the world:

• LoveNotes – Love Notes is a New Zealand company that provides a collection service to businesses to upcycle their one-sided non confidential paper into note books. Love it!
• Children’s toys made from recycled wood and plastic from Go Green Games.
• PlanetGreen.com’s top 10 Great Green reads of the past 10 years.
• The camp in your kitchen – stackable and very practical kitchen gear from Pila.
• A new eco-index for clothing will be able to tell you the complete life cycle impact of that item of clothing. Be great to see that here.
• Re-Nest lists the 10 alternatives to plastic wrap here.
• Is one of your New Year resolutions to reduce the amount of stuff you have then check out Zoove.

Have a great waste free weekend.

Ever wondered what happens to your clothes after you put them in a donation clothing bin? No? Presumably the clothing is directly transported onto shelves for resale. Right?

We recently headed over to St Vincent de Paul in Stanmore Road to find out what they are doing with the clothing they receive in their clothing bins. Fed up with paying for waste clothing to go to landfill they felt that they could do better and come up with new solutions for the clothing that they could not sell.

Interestingly, here in Christchurch only 25-30% of donated clothing actually enters the St Vincent de Paul stores. The other 65-75%, due to donations being of such a poor quality (yes, clothing bins donations require a level of wear-ability), are dumped. Into landfill. Until now.

St Vincent de Paul has decided to reuse the unwearable clothing in a different way. By approaching local industries the charity found that some of the clothing can be turned into usable rags, customised to the requirements of local businesses who can use them (not just in a couple of sizes). The rest of the unwearable clothing is stockpiled waiting for a solution – currently four containers have been filled.

The purchase of a commercial over-locker has allowed a skilled machinist to customize toweling specifically for car groomers and cleaners and t-shirt material is specifically for mechanics (good oil absorbtion). With an increase in demand from these services the reserve of toweling fabric is now running low. This is a welcomed income input for the charity.

In comparison to St Vincent de Paul, the Salvation Army has 40% of their donated clothing going to local shops for resale and 60% is sold on to a third party who exports the clothing to Africa.

Most surprisingly, the Red Cross imports clothing from Australia, with orders (like a commercial store) being placed to a central warehouse hub across the Tasman. 128 tonnes of second hand clothes were shipped into Tauranga, as quoted in The Press (05/05/2010) due to insufficient donations of a high enough quality from within New Zealand for resale in New Zealand stores. With 4% of waste nationally* being textile waste, the 128 tonnes is an unfortunate addition to the future waste stream.

There are non charitable businesses that work within this small industry also; Tasman Traders and Doonans are rag traders who take old clothing and make them into rags of a few sizes (although not customized for each service like St Vincent de Paul are doing) – and although a percentage of their profits go to charity, this may be as little as 1%. The Traders bins out number charity bins, with hundreds distributed around Christchurch city. Currently the Red Cross have no bins, and St Vincent de Paul have 22 at Catholic parishes around Christchurch.

We have a long way to go yet before we have successfully tackled textile waste but in the meantime here are a few tips to ensure your clothes are sold once you have donated them:

So some tips before you put your clothes into the charity bin:

• Check the quality – no rips or stains

• Wash them first

• Ring your local charity to see if they have any specific requirements before you donate them

• If they aren’t really wearable, think of the uses around the house first – turn them into rags (cleaning the car, windows, washing pets etc)

• Some charities also take household goods like sheets, towels, kitchen and cook ware

• Be mindful of the amount of clothing you buy each year – remember to reduce your consumption first.

* http://www.mfe.govt.nz/environmental-reporting/report-cards/waste-composition/2009/

An estimated 3.156 million tonnes of waste went to landfill in 2006 making the textile waste portion of 4% in 2007/2008 equivalent to 126,240 tonnes just in textiles or 31.5kg per person per year. In Christchurch the total waste to landfill in 2009/2010 was estimated to be 170,000 tonnes – using the national percentage of 4% of textile waste to landfill that’s 6800 tonnes just to Kate Valley Landfill or 19.5kg per person per year.

First thing last Tuesday morning I arrived at the CCC2 Materials Recovery Facility in Parkhouse Road. The sky was super dark and it was really cold (arrived in a hail storm) but the tour of the massive recyclables sorting machine was still very informative (the MRF machine is housed in a 4000 square metre building). The photos are not the best due to the bad light but it gives you an idea. It was put in place about 15 months ago and can process all of Christchurch, Selwyn and Waimak’s recyclables. Each stage of the machine does a different process and there is still some hand sorting in some areas (like pulling out clothes, floppy plastic and in one case a toy plastic gun!). Clothes are the biggest contaminant of recyclable bins – we as yet have no facility to recycle textiles and fabrics.

A basic run down  is that all of the trucks come in to the park and dump the recyclables that have come from the yellow bins into a big pile at one end. This is then scooped up and placed on a movable floor. At different points there are different types of screens and separators so that different types of waste drop down onto another conveyer to go into their respecitive piles and there are even magnets to pull out the metals. Small items like bits of glass also drop down into their own conveyer belt and there is a large glass pile at the end of the process. This glass is used for such things as grit blasting and filtration systems. Nearly at the end of the process there is an optical sorter  that can determine the different types of plastic (HDPE, PET etc) through the use of infared scanning and group them so they are separated (making it easier to on-sell) and then right at the end is the baler to bale up all of the different types of wastes (for local and international recyclers).

CCC have done a great video of the whole process which shows you much better than the photos below. You can watch a video of the process here.

Here are the photos from the site visit:

Pile of Rubbish for Recovery

Pile of rubbish behind an 7ft metal wall

Rubbish moving up the conveyer belt (there were about 4 of these inclines)

Rubbish moving through the recovery sorting process

The separate glass conveyer

Looking back from the baler end of the process

A final conveyer belt

The pile of glass outside

Here are today’s Friday Favourites – have a great weekend.

• Soccer World Cup and Nike’s recycled plastic jerseys – an estimated 13 million plastic bottles prevent from going to landfill – even New Zealand is wearing them.
• M&S Plan A leading the way on sustainable business – looking to extend the amount of clothing being recycled from 2 million tonnes to 20 million tonnes.
• Fake Plastic Fish discovers some biodegradable/compostable products are not so much.
• Loving the green design content from the  blog Re-nest especially this post.
• Creative paper recycling.
• Another clothing store is recycling its clothes here.

And don’t forget if you have old whiteware tomorrow is the national Fisher and Paykel whiteware recycling day.The first 50 people through the gates will receive a $150 voucher towards some new (more energy efficient no doubt) whiteware. Below are the details for Christchurch:

Fisher & Paykel Whiteware Recycling Day Christchurch details

Tesco- From Somewhere for F&F recycled clothing

It is starting to happen – recycled clothing has hit the mainstream. UK supermarket  Tesco have teamed up with ethical fashion company From Somewhere to produce a new line of clothes made in a LEED certified factory in Sri Lanka from old Tesco clothing stock that would otherwise end up in landfill. And prices start at an affordable £16 (NZD$35).

You can read more here from the Guardian.

It’s time for New Zealand fashion companies to start recycling their old clothing stock and become more sustainable (as well as providing clothing made sustainably, ethically and with low environmental impact).

We would love to know if there is anyone in New Zealand already doing this?

Pete Dungey Pothole Garden

Here are this weeks favourite links:

• Fall fashion week 2010 with clothing made from waste.
• Reduce plastic waste by making your own bread in 5 minutes here.
• A few more ideas on collecting household waste without plastic bags from Fake Plastic Fish.
• Ellerslie International Flower Show will have a new Sustainable garden this year.
• Glass recyling at the recent More FM winery tours with Tim Finn, Dave Dobbyn and Bic Runga.
• By 2014 British Airways planes will be run on London’s waste.
• And another great blog post from Fake Plastic Fish and carrying our own containers for food and takeaways.
• Moving to a sustainable future we need more wisdom.