Ever wonder what the people of Chippenham are drinking and discarding? Here’s a list of the beverage brands found at this past weekend’s Community Clean Up in Donkey Field. Items marked with an asterisk (*) were the most popular in each category.
Alcohol
This made up 18% of the recycling found.
- Budweiser* (10 items)
- Bulmer Cider
- Caribbean Twist Strawberry Daiquiri
- Carling
- Carlsberg
- Carlsberg Special Brew
- Carlsberg Kronenbourg
1664 - Coors Light
- Corona Extra
- Eridge Vale Super Strong Cider
- Foster’s
- Frosty
Jack’s Cider - Grolsch
- Heineken
- Lambrini Original Slightly Sparkling
Perry - Malibu
- Old Speckled Hen
- Rekorderlig Premium Strawberry Lime
Cider - Smirnoff Vodka
- Stella Artois
- Stella Cidre
- Strongbow
- Thatcher’s Cider
Energy Drinks
This was 17% of the recycling found, and we’re up to a total of 37 different energy drinks logged in Chippenham over the past year.
- Best-in Stimulation Drink
- Emerge (9 cans)
- KX
- Monster (13 cans)*
- Red Bull (13 cans)*
- Red Bull Blue
- Red Bull Tropical
- Red Thunder
- Relentless
- Rockstar
- Spartan Energy Drink
Fruit Drinks
Not everyone is amped up on energy drinks and alcohol – fruit drinks made up 6% of the recycling found.
- Oasis* (6 items)
- Ribena* (6 items … including a can with a 1994 Best Before date)
- Rio Tropical Juice
- Robinson’s Fruit Shoot
- Robinson’s Fruit and Barley
- Tesco Orange Juice
- Tropicana Orange Juice
- Zeo
Milk Drinks
Milk may do a body good, but it only made up 2% of our recyclable litter.
- Mars Milk
- Morrison’s Whole Milk
- Yazoo Milk Drink* (4 items)
Sodas
Chippenham always seems to come up as a Coke town, with 28 items belonging to one of the varieties of Coca Cola. Sodas overall made up a full 25% of the recycling found.
- 7-Up
- Barr Cola
- Coca Cola* (19 items)
- Coca Cola Cherry
- Coca Cola Diet Cherry
- Diet Coke
- Coca Cola Life
- Dr Pepper
- Euro Shopper Orangeade
- Fanta
- Irn-Bru
- Lilt
- Mountain Dew
- Orangina
- Pepsi
- Pepsi Max
- Diet Pepsi
- San Pellegrino
- Sprite
- Tango
- Virgin Cola
Sports Drinks
The number of sports drinks found seems a bit lower than usual, with only 10% of the recycling falling into this category. Lucozade has also become an expletive around our house, as it’s one of the most common items of litter found. This Community Clean Up turned up 24 items between the different varieties.
- Explosade
- Gatorade
- Lucozade*
- Lucozade Sport*
- Lucozade Energy*
- Powerade Ion4
- Tesco Active Isotonic
Water
We have a high number of unknown plastic bottles that we think are water, but 6% of those that still had labels could definitively be traced to a water bottle.
- Buxton Water
- Evian
- Glaceau Smart Water
- Harrogate Spring Water
- Ice Valley Water
- Nestle Pure Life Still Spring Water
- Saka Spring Water
- Trederwen Essence
- Volvic Water
- Volvic Touch of Fruit* (7 items)
- Wilco Mountain Falls Water
Other, non-beverage items made up 3% of recyclable finds, and unknowns 14%. Regardless of the brands, what I find incredible is that all of this–all 306 items found in a 2-hour period–could be recycled and re-enter the manufacturing stream. It’s waste that doesn’t need to exist, but which crops up again and again and again. What’s the answer? Bottle bills? Reverse vending machines? How to shift the view of waste from disposable to valuable?