Ecover :(

[ailbhe]

A while ago I filled in a little form on a website:

I was disappointed to find that Ecover dishwasher tablets are individually plastic-wrapped. I have no local facility to recycle these wrappings. It also appears that Ecover do not sell a dishwashing liquid nor loose powder. Can I mail my little plastic packets back to Ecover for recycling?

Thanks,

Today I received a response:

Thank you for your email. Whilst the PP wrappers are 100% recyclable, unfortunately no local councils to my knowledge, will accept this type of plastic for recycling at present. There are companies that recycle this type of plastic but they will only do so for huge quantities. We need to use a PP wrapper to keep moisture away from the tablets and we are looking at alternative packaging methods that would solve this recycling problem. Unfortunately we do not have the facilities to store plastic that customer send back as we only have a small office in the UK. I’m sorry to have to disappoint you.

Kind regards

So the stuff is recyclable but that makes not a blind bit of difference - it has to go into landfill. Phooey.

(In other news, it is once again Too Darn Hot, and we have a stack of stuff outside the door as well as listed on Freecycle; it WILL go into landfill if it's still here on Wednesday night and I feel terribly, terribly guilty about it. Why the hell do we have so much stuff? Most of it we didn't even buy ourselves!)

Comments

[cookwitch.livejournal.com]

This might sound daft, but our council recycles plastics. Post them to me (I imagine they won't cost much at all seeing as they weight nothing)when you have lots and I'll pop them in our bag for you!

[tiggsybabes.livejournal.com]

That's a shame :/ I like refilling our ecover washing powder & washing up liquid, but I just do it myself by storing big bags / boxes in the cellar & re-filling the smaller ones. I also buy the squirt refills. I love squirt & clean practically everything with it :)

[nex0s.livejournal.com]

I am too distracted by the Extreme Cuteness of your icon to feel bad about the environment right now :)

*dies of cute overload*

n.

[squishsplash.livejournal.com]

At least it's kiddie safe...

Dishwashing powder is said to one of the most dangerous (and underestimated) poison traps for toddlers.

Doesn't help the recycling issue though.

[ailbhe]

Do they really recycle small scraps of polypropelene? If you can confirm that they do I will definitely post you my plastic scraps and write to my council and Ecover to tell them there's a council doing it. Er, assuming you let me know which council it is.

[ailbhe]

There's no option for refills with the dishwasher tablets. We used refills for laundry liquid and washing up liquid for ages, but then somehow it became MORE expensive to buy the refills than the individual jugs. Luckily our council recycles plastic *bottles* so that's ok.

[cookwitch.livejournal.com]

Yes. We get given orange recycle sacks and you can put all plastics, papers and cardboard type things in there, then they cart them off to the recycling centre. The only thing they don't take is material or glass. It's the London Borough of Havering, by the way. Drop me an email and I'll give you my address. :)

[thealmondtree.livejournal.com]

The whole recylcing thing bothers me hugely. We have several very ugly landfill sites close to us. Our local council is one of the better ones for reclycling apparently but they still _only_ take plastic bottles. No other form of plastic, even if it's the same type of plastic, which seems bizarre to me.

[sashajwolf.livejournal.com]

I discovered recently when I had run out of Ecover tablets (and couldn't get to a shop that sells them) that Finish have a new dishwasher tablet that doesn't require an individual wrapping - instead, it's encased in a gel which dissolves in the dishwasher cycle. I wonder why Ecover can't do that. I don't know what's in the gel - perhaps it's something horrible?

[(Anonymous)]

I'd suspect it's some kind of plant cellulose similar to that Marks and Spencer are using for the windows in their sandwich wrappers these days, just a little less stable.

Of course, it could be Gelatin which could have all sorts of interesting side effects, such as your dishwasher rendering your crockery non-vegan/kosher/halal. All they say on their website is "Special Resin"

For anybody who's interested, the brand is Finish Quantum.