Grace Onions, from the Croydon Soroptimists, and Patricia Painting, from the Rotary Club of Croydon, have been collecting used blister packs for recycling by the specialist company TerraCycle.
Blistering success: Onions (left) and Painting have found a way to deal with their packaging
Blister packets are made from rigid plastic sides with an aluminium foil. They are among the more difficult pieces of daily waste to recycle. But Onions and Painting have found an operator who can do just that.
First, the blister packets are shredded down into to flakes or powder.
The aluminium is then separated out from the plastic, sent for smelting, then typically used as the base material for products such as washers, rings, nut and bolts.
The plastics go through a melting process where they become a usable raw material for new products. Depending on the material composition of the plastic, these recycled blister packets can live again as new products, ranging from waste bins, UPVC window frames, outdoor furniture or plastic lumber.
The different material types are cleaned, then sent to third-party processing partners that recycle the materials into usable forms.
The sample of blister packs seen in the photo above have been collected from Soroptimists, Rotarians, friends, neighbours, and members of the Purley and Coulsdon Clubs for the Elderly, while Superdrug Croydon helped by offering a collection point for customers’ used blister packs on behalf of TerraCycle.
- To discover more about the Rotary Club of Croydon and their activities, click here
- To find out more about the Soroptimists International in Croydon, click here
- If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, or want to publicise your residents’ association or business, or if you have a local event to promote, please email us with full details at inside.croydon@btinternet.com
Inside Croydon is a member of the Independent Community News Network- Inside Croydon works together with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, as well as BBC London News and ITV London
- ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: Croydon was named the country’s rottenest borough in 2020 in the annual round-up of civic cock-ups in Private Eye magazine – the fourth successive year that Inside Croydon has been the source for such award-winning nominations
- Inside Croydon: 3million page views in 2020. Seen by 1.4million unique visitors
Well done to Onions and Painting, and to Soroptomists and Rotarians and to the recycling company Terracycle for this initiative !
Like tens of millions of others, across the globe, every week I use up medications and then throw away the blister packs as “non recyclable” waste. It seems a terrible waste of a clean package and all that foil and plastic. Mountains of material into landfill or burned in places like Beddington.
Maybe I am wrong, but I am not aware that Croydon council allows us to out these packs in the recycling wheely bin.
This just goes to show that caring and strong individuals in the community can find a way forward and prove that recycling of “difficult” waste is in fact not only possible but economically viable.
National Government should be specifying that every council should recycle these blister packs.
And also –cannot these blister packs all be made of alloy, both the bottom layer and the foil, so that the whole lot can be melted down?