The fact that plastic has a negative impact on our environment is something no one has missed. The world produces around 300 million tonnes of plastic each year and only a small part of this is recycled into new products. It is mandatory that we humans start taking responsibility for the plastic that we already have produced, for our and our planet's sake.
Background:
Our rings are made out of 100 % recycled HDPE plastic. The material used in the rings is plastic waste collected by our partners, Brasseri21 and Västerängens lantbruk, in the form lids from PET bottles and milk jugs. HDPE plastic can be recycled 10 times without affecting the quality of the material.
How much plastic is recycled?
It is widely accepted that only less than 10 % of the world's plastic waste is actually recycled. But what happens to the other 90 %? The rest either is incinerated, placed in landfills and forgotten about, or ends up in nature. Which according to us are terrible statistics that needs to change!
The problem with recycling
Furthermore, plastic that actually is recycled is generally downgraded into something with less value in every recycling step until it no longer is recycled. The opposite of this is upcycling which is a term used to describe the process of recycling waste but at the same time turning it into something of higher value or quality. This means that the material's life span is extended which at the same time prevents it from ending up in places where it does not belong.
Recycling vs Upcycling
Upcycling we can say is a better version of recycling and the one we should be aiming toward in order to extend the life span of the materials we have already produced. For this to happen we need to transform our linear economy into a circular economy that favors recycling and upcycling as opposed to producing new products and throwing them away.
Our work with upcycling
What we do is ultimately to take plastic which would only have a 10 % chance of being recycled, and turn it into a product of both higher value and quality. This means we make sure the HDPE plastic around us is actually recycled and even upcycled. This plastic is then passed to our customers in the form of a Solus ring and can be used and loved for a very long time. This compared to a plastic lid or a milk jug which is 99 times of 100 is directly thrown away / (hopefully recycled) after its first use.