Bread tags - recycling

Warren-Pat_01 · Guru

Bread tags - recycling

Dougwe · Chief one feather

G'day Warren, all the best for 2021

My daughter was saying she rang the council for help with mozzies breeding in her back yard and was told to tip Kero in the water.

Eeek! That sounds very safe indeed.

Edit...Strange things going on today.

-- Edited by Dougwe on Thursday 7th of January 2021 04:08:29 PM

Possum3 · Guru

Dougwe wrote:
My daughter was saying she rang the council for help with mozzies breeding in her back yard and was told to tip Kero in the water.

Eeek! That sounds very safe indeed.

We always pour a cup of Kero in our 30,000litre tanks after rainfall causes tank to overflow - it floats on top, doesn't taste in water - keeps frogs and mossies out - Gawd Mate if you've seen some of the things (dead and otherwise) we've found when we empty tanks.

sherbert · Member

Hello , I save the bread bag clips and the plastic bottle tops for charity . Also have made flowers from bottle tops .

oldbloke · Guru

Tags/labels for electrical leads.

Gaylehere · Guru

I'm a Queenslander too and save the bread bag tags and similar tags off of anything and everything for the wheelchair charity. Also save the screw lids off of the milk cartons. Not sure who they go to but I hand them on to someone who is doing the collecting. I sew, so my fabric scraps together with the cardboard interior of paper towel rolls, ribbon rolls go to a local kindy. They couldn't take egg cartons last year as one of the pupils was allergic to eggs. One of the local recycling places has a bucket for drink can pull tops for another group, our newspapers, used wrapping paper goes to another group. Not much at our place goes in the wheelie bin on collection day. One of the states recently changed their bread bag tags to cardboard instead of plastic (can't remember which one) and some were unhappy because they could no longer save them for the wheelchair charity. Cheers.

Peter_n_Margaret · Guru

Wonderful thoughts and actions saving this stuff for charity, but it is all a little bit strange.
Bread bag tags are made from High Impact Polystyrene. A very common plastic material and easily recycleable. That 10kg bag full of them that 50 people spent 3 months collecting is probably worth about $1, maybe $1.50, total. The average household would chuck 50 times as much other of that identical plastic into the recycle bin as they collect in bread bag tags.

Same goes for crown seal bottle tops (they are just contaminated steel) and most of these other things.
Drink can pull tops are simply aluminium, nothing special. They are designed to stay attached to the can so they don't become litter and can be recycled complete with the rest of the can, so separating them is somewhat counterproductive.

Milk bottle tops are polypropylene. The bottle itself is polyethylene, so the recyclers like them separate to get better recycle properties from the polyethylene which is higher volume, easier to identify and separate from the other plastics. Again, the value of the tops is a few cents per kg.
Cheers,
Peter

KJB · Guru

Keep it simple - Kero in water tanks etc. has been used for years to prevent mosquito breeding - it works.

Warren-Pat_01 · Guru

We don't worry about water tanks - they aren't encouraged due to the possible dengue fever. Plus one decent shower in the wet season, they'd be full & overflowing possibly causing back ups in the down pipes. Yes we could use them in a drought but I collect water from other sources e.g. dew off the roof (10L per downpipe per day). And yes from past life down south, I'm aware of the kero use.
We are encouraged to hose out our bromilliads in case wrigglers breed in them. Bird baths are another source too but those wrigglers in our bird baths feed my pond tropical fish.

The bread tags - I just highlighted the article just in case others didn't know about their possible use.

Gaylehere - thanks for your ideas too. At one stage ring pulls off alum cans were thought to be titanium & Rotary were taking them. But while I have a container of them, I believe they are only aluminium.
Anything that keeps our incompatible stuff out of landfill is good.
I put egg cartons in our compost bins.

sherbert, I think you should repost your ideas in the "Craft & hobby" page in case someone is interested in the future.

Craig1 · Guru

Apparently milk bottle tops can be easily re-used in 3d printers.

Peter_n_Margaret · Guru

Craig1 wrote:
Apparently milk bottle tops can be easily re-used in 3d printers.

As could any source of polypropylene in a 3D printer that uses polypropylene.

Milk bottle tops are not a "special" material.

We have an evaporative air conditioner on our house roof. It is made almost entirely from polypropylene (and a couple of kg of High impact polystyrene that are the same as the bread tags).

Cheers,

Peter

dabbler · Guru

Peter_and_Margaret, the dollar value of small recycleables is irrelevant. Groups that recycle huge quantities of small plastics and metals are the only way to avoid the items entering the irretrievable waste stream. They play an increasingly important role in the reduction, reuse snd recycling of known problem materials and a small effort from tens of thousands of people is a worthy effort. Small items in your council recycling bin are viewed as contamination and put the entire bin load at risk of being diverted to landfill.

dabbler · Guru

https://ozbreadtagsforwheelchairs.org.au/

Peter_n_Margaret · Guru

There are many products like these made form 98-100% recycled consumer waste. The limit to the sales of these products is price and public acceptance, compared with timber, not material supply or quality.
www.codiesplace.com.au/eco/3627-plastic-composite-lumber-fence-post.tml
While admiral, recycling 50kg of bread tags a month (probably less) is great, but we need to recycle 10,000 tons per month to make a difference.
Taking that 50kg of HIPS out of the recycle stream and leaving the other 1,000 tonns in will make not one jot of difference, sadly.
If you really want to make a difference, reduce your consumption of all materials and buy products that contain a high % of recycle material.
PET coke bottles are now made from 100% recycled material (they claim). That will make a difference, especially if other drink makers are pressured to follow suit.
Cheers,
Peter

dabbler · Guru

Everything recycled and not going to landfill or the natural environment is of benefit. Not everything has to be boiled down to dollars.

Peter_n_Margaret · Guru

Yes, every bit of recycle helps, but it does all come down to dollars unfortunately.
Dollars is why we have so much rubbish, dollars is why we don't recycle as much as we might.
Plastic is like congealed oil. It can be recycled time and time again into new products and when it is too contaminated to make new products from, the energy that it started with is still there and still available. Sweden (from memory) have power generating furnaces fuelled by consumer waste (mostly plastic), not coal. They can burn it all, cleanly. That reduces their coal and gas consumption.
Cheers,
Peter