Arsenal FC has announced they will be playing the next season in a home kit made out of recycled bottles.

They say they have got a ‘traditional’ design made with the latest cutting edge technology.

Every shirt which will be entirely made from recycled polyester, from up to eight plastic water bottles. It will be part of the Nike’s ‘Considered Design’ programme, which uses discarded plastic bottles that have been diverted from landfill in the manufacturing process.

The shirt is now 13% lighter than any previous kit and helps quickly evaporate moisture by drawing it through the fabric to the surface.

England and Arsenal winger Theo Walcott summed the new kit up: “The colours are very traditional, it feels nice and it’s made from recycled plastic bottles so what more can you ask for?

“It fits and feels nice, and that’s the most important thing, I think it’s important that you feel comfortable in it.”

Working for BuilderScrap gives me the opportunity to read up on every day environmental issues. I recently came across a very interesting article regarding the effect that glasses and contact lenses have on the environment.

Apparently this came in to focus during the big 3D cinema hype that has had the world drooling over the next incredible step forward in watching television. The film ‘Avatar’ created a demand for 42 million pairs of 3D glasses to be produced. The grand scheme to help counter the inevitable waste guaranteed to be left was to collect and reuse where it is possible, as I’m sure many people will have taken them home, and either lose or break them or simply put them in the bin (and probably not a recycle bin).

That isn’t the only waste caused by visual impairment; disposable contact lenses obviously have a clear environmental fault. It also doesn’t help that they arrive in sanitized blister packs and come with plastic bottles of solution. Single use lenses may not have the same size ecological effect as long term lenses, but still have an effect all the same.

So as it stands glasses are seen as the environmentally conscious person’s choice of sight enhancement. The problem with glasses is the frame, the heavily laminated acetates which is made from non renewable oils, which causes the creation of them to be highly damaging to the environment.

The opticians clearly don’t see this as a problem as ‘BOGOF’ offers are often the lead for their campaigns. A current pair of glasses is expected to last on average 2.2 years. So next time when you go to pick up your new spectacles why not ask for eco frames which contain recycled acetate, and show that you’re not short sighted when it comes to the environment.

The public were asked whether they agreed with the statement “people have a duty to recycle“. The vast majority (88%) agreed representing an increase of ten percentage points since 2007 (see Figure 11). The level of disagreement with this statement was very low – just 5% of respondents disagreed in 2009, representing a small decrease from 7% in the 2007 Defra survey.

At our Builders Exchange we love to to look back at old surveys to compare and contrast results.

Reuse of items and use of own bags when shopping were also measured in the 2007 survey. There have been distinct increases in the numbers reporting that they were doing these behaviours (Figure 10). Since 2007, the proportion of respondents saying that they always or very often reused items has more than doubled, from 18% to 45%. Those saying that they never reused items had decreased by nine percentage points to 13%.

Figure 10 shows that those who always or very often take their own bags when they shop had nearly trebled since 2007 from 25% to 70%. In 2007 there was a larger proportion of respondents who would sometimes or occasionally take their own bags (22%), but the survey findings suggest that this has become more frequent for the majority of shoppers. In 2007, a third of respondents said they never took their own
bags – this has now reduced to just 10% of respondents.

Double, trebled great work!

Readers, at the BuilderScrap.com offices we’ve been reading and are frankly astonished at peoples attitudes to Energy and climate change. We thought we’d share more of the findings

Respondents were asked to indicate which one of six statements best reflected their feelings with regard to energy use and climate change. Responses to the question are shown in Table 4 compared with findings from tracker surveys carried out by the Energy Saving Trust in 2007 and 2008.

Attitudes towards the environment and climate change

In total 85% of all respondents indicated that they thought climate change was caused by energy use (this is largely consistent with findings from the Energy Saving Trust Tracker surveys in 2008 and 2007). Just 4% specifically said they did not believe that there are climate change problems caused by energy use with 5% indicating they “didn’t know”.

Around one in ten respondents (9%) indicated that they were not willing or able to change their behaviour with regard to energy use. In this respect the findings from the current survey are very similar to those from the Energy Saving Trust Tracker surveys in 2008 and 2007 (10% expressed this same opinion both in 2008 and 2007).

A little more than a third (36%) of respondents said they thought that climate change was caused by energy use and they were doing either “quite a number of things‟ (27%) or “a lot of things‟ (9%) to reduce their energy use and emissions. This represents a significant increase since 2008 and 2007 (when respectively 19% and 20% said they were doing quite a number or a lot of things). There has also been a decrease in the proportion who said they were “beginning to think that I should do something‟ (17% in 2009 compared with 27% in 2008 and 29% in 2007).

“(9%) indicated that they were not willing or able to change their behaviour” . This attitude isn’t going to help us reduce our effect on the environment. If attitudes like this continue, we certainly will destroy our communities and undo the great work that the majority have undertaken.

Must try harder! get Recycling GB

Check out this fuzzy picture!

Looking through the new items listed on BuilderScrap.com this week we found a very interesting item… Executive Restrooms.

The picture has degraded as I’ve blown it up. To look at the image and description visit BuilderScrap.com Recycle

Executive Restrooms on BuilderScrap

The reason for the degrade… probably uploaded using mobile phone technology a key benefit on the BuilderScrap.com system. To find out more on uploading from mobile phone click on the hyperlink.

BuilderScrap.com is looking into the Recycling effort around the world

We know the UK government is trying to encourage more people to recycle their waste and reduce the UK’s waste mountain. Figures suggested in 2005 that 60% of all household waste could be recycled or composted, but the largest nation in the UK, England, appears to be reusing only 17.7%.

We’ve found some articles from BBC correspondents that provide a snapshot of how the UK’s European neighbours and other countries approach recycling of everyday rubbish.

Todays country is: SWITZERLAND: Imogen Foulkes investigates.

Switzerland is proud of its recycling efforts, and with good reason. Glass and paper are just some of the things the average Swiss refuses to simply throw away.

There are bottle banks at every supermarket, with separate slots for clear, green and brown glass. Every town has a free paper collection once a month, and that does not mean just old newspapers; most people recycle everything made of cardboard or paper, from cereal packets to old telephone bills.

Then there is green waste. If you have a garden, all the trimmings can be put out on the street (neatly bundled of course) every two weeks, and they will be collected.

Aluminium and tin can be taken to local depots, batteries handed over at the supermarket, and old oil or other chemicals deposited at special sites.

Plastic PET bottles are the most common drinks containers in Switzerland, and 80% of them are recycled – far higher than the European average of 20 to 40%.

But the Swiss do not recycle just because they care about the environment. There is a strong financial incentive. Recycling is free, but in most parts of Switzerland throwing away rubbish costs money – each rubbish bag has to have a sticker on it, and each sticker costs at least one euro (60 pence).

So the less you throw out, the less you pay. No sticker? Then the rubbish will be left outside your house to rot.