Nowadays, sustainability and eco-friendly practices are more important than ever before. Being environmentally aware isn’t just a nice thing for your business to do, it’s essential.
Poor sustainability practices in UK businesses can risk alienating customers or employees and send the wrong message about your company. But by taking steps to be more sustainable, you’ll benefit from lower costs, better long-term prospects, and an improved public image – not to mention giving the environment a helping hand too!
There's a serious need to reduce plastic waste
Now it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, but the big wastelands where everyone dumps their smelly rubbish is not so hot for the planet. Avoiding landfills and promoting more sustainable waste management practices can help protect our planet for future generations.
As a distributor of plastic products, we feel compelled to look for products and services that help our customers reduce their environmental impact. That’s why we’re currently investigating the Plastic Strapping Recovery Scheme.
The Plastic Strap Recovery Scheme Explained
Put simply, our Plastic Strapping Recovery Scheme is a not-for-profit project aimed at reducing plastic waste in landfills. We are urging businesses to invest in a strap shredder which will chip the strap down, bag it up and then the strap will be collected from a central location.
Currently, the strap we send will arrive in a customers warehouse and be used to secure their product or pallet. That’s then transported internally i.e. to another warehouse, site or store, or it’s sent on to another company. Following the breakdown of the product/pallet, the strap is usually thrown into your standard ‘plastics bin’ which will make its way to the undesirable landfill where it takes generations to break down.
In order to stop this process, we at Gordian would like to create a ‘closed-loop system’ whereby the finished strap is collected from the end-user. The key is trying to communicate this message to the full supply chain and pinpointing the location in which the strap is broken down.
Anyone who’s worked with plastic strapping before will know that it is a very flexible material. It’s what makes it a so great for securing and holding items given its ability to bend and conform to the shape of the items being secured. However, it makes for an awkward time when trying to store them or bag them up for recycling.
Which is why we’re encouraging customers and end-users to invest in a StrapChopper. Much like a paper shredder, the StrapChopper cut plastic strapping into smaller, more manageable pieces for recycling. It makes for an uncomplicated process when it comes to storage and transport as l the strap is caught in big bags.
It’s a machine that doesn’t require major up-front investment, is easy to handle, doesn’t take up a huge amount of room and has a long service life. Tick, tick, tick, tick.
It’s worth saying, we stand to gain no revenue from selling these machines and the Plastic Strap Recovery Scheme is entirely non-for-profit.
Why Should My Business Get Involved?
Firstly, it helps reduce the amount of waste going to landfill and in turn reduces carbon emissions.
Secondly, it is financially beneficial – you can save money on disposal costs and, by investing in a strap shredder, your business is directly helping increase the availability of material for strap production. Which will in turn lower the price.
Finally, it increases your organisation's environmentally friendly credentials and shows customers and clients that you take sustainability seriously.
So if you want to go green and stop the flow of plastic strapping waste into landfills, the Plastic Strap Recovery Scheme could be ideal for your business.
It’s a project that we’re still currently exploring and we’d love to be able to roll it out across a range of our major customers. So if you could provide any feedback, it would go a long way to getting the wheels in motion.
Get in touch or fill in the form below.
We’ve also previously mentioned our stance on the plastic packaging tax (PPT) and introduced our StraPack AQ-7KB paper strapping machine, which we’d love for you to check out.
