Like all of our rubbish walks, we took the recycling from the Community Clean Up home for a proper tally of type and brands before disposing of it at a nearby Recycling Centre. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: items that can be recycling typically make up at least half of what we find in Chippenham. Until the UK takes litter seriously and institutes something like a bottle bill, rubbish will continue to pile up.
During the Community Clean Up, we found a
total of 442 recyclable items: 71 glass, 183 plastic
bottles, and 188 cans. They break down into the following categories.
Sodas: 30%
Alcohol: 29%
Energy Drinks: 12%
Sports Drinks: 8%
Unknown: 8%
Fruit Juices: 6%
Milk Drinks: 5%
Water: 2%
Other Beverages: 1%
The most popular soda? Coca-Cola, being 45% of all soda found, and 13%
of all recyclables overall. Pepsi was in distant second at 21% of all
soda, followed closely by Dr. Pepper at 20%.
Alcohol brands are
far more distributed, with Foster’s coming out on top (17% of all
alcohol) followed by Stella Artois at 9% and Carling and Budweiser tied
for third at 7%.
Red Bull retains its crown as top energy drink
(35%), followed by Monster (28%). A number of brands tied for third at
6% of the energy drink category: Emerge, KX, Relentless, Rockstar.
A large number of sports drinks near a gym probably isn’t a surprise,
nor is Lucozade coming in at #1: 94% of recyclables in the sports drinks
category were one of the many types of Lucozade on the market, and 7%
of all recyclables was a Lucozade.
Fruit drinks had three top brands, each getting 22% of the category: Oasis, Ribena, and Robinson’s Fruit Shoot.
Frijj has 45% of the milk drinks category, followed by Mars Milk at 20% and Yazoo and Yop each at 10%.
We take the time to record the types and brands of recycling to build
up a picture of what is going on in Chippenham and get an idea of who
may be responsible for much of the litter. And that’s the thing to
remember – it is not the brands who are causing the litter, but rather
it is people who decide not to use a bin.
And in case you were wondering what 16 bags of recycling (and a few organisational bits and bobs) looked like stuffed into a car …
