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Rotary and Soroptimists club together to reduce waste

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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.


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