Lucozade Sport bottles are to be made from 100% recycled plastic.

Lucozade have announced that their bottles will be made entirely from recycled plastic by the end of 2021, after a £6m investment in their Gloucestershire site. Suntory Beverage and Food have said that this policy will save 3,400 tonnes of new plastic from being produced each year.

Lucozade also owns the brand Ribena, which have already changed their bottles to be fully recyclable. 

"The aim of using recycled plastic is to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 80%, which equates to 9,000 tonnes." BBC News 

BBC News

Large-scale CO2 removal facility set for Scotland 

A large facility which can extract large amounts of Carbon Dioxide from the air is being planned for North East Scotland. This plant could remove up to one million tonnes of CO2 every year which is the same amount taken up by around 40 million trees.

"Their system involves a fan to suck in air, which is then exposed to a liquid mixture that binds the carbon dioxide. Through further refinement, the liquid is turned into calcium carbonate pellets. When these are treated at temperature of about 900C, the pellets decompose into a CO2 stream and calcium oxide. That stream of pure CO2 is cleaned up to remove water impurities. At that point it can be pumped underground and buried permanently, sold for commercial use or even turned into liquid fuel." - BBC News

BBC News

Bristol coffee cup recycling scheme

Nearly half a million coffee cups have been saved from landfill as part of a new recycling scheme. There has been a large amount of cup bins placed around Bristol to make it easier for people to recycle their coffee cups. So far 5.6 tonnes of single use cups have been turned into greeting cards, paper bags and gift boxes. 

With cup bins now being placed in hospitals, this means the scheme has been extremely successful and will be expanding further. 

"Since the 'For Cups Sake' recycling scheme was rolled out in February 2020, more than 465,000 cups have been collected." - BBC News

Once cups are collected, they are baled at the Bristol Waste site in Avonmouth. The plastic lining in coffee cups is removed which allows the paper to be recycled into items like cards, notebooks, and paper shopping bags.

"Nationally, three billion single-use coffee cups are thrown away each year, with less than four per cent currently recycled."

BBC News

Lego plans to make their bricks from recycled bottles.

Lego makes around 3,500 different bricks in different shapes, but they have been facing the challenge of coming up with a sustainable product that can last years.

Their goal is to find a product good enough that people don't notice the difference. Lego has plans to make their bricks from recycled bottles as soon as possible. 

BBC News

Sainsbury's announces its largest rollout of innovative in-store recycling system.

After successfully trialling its first recycling system, they are now rolling this out to a total of 520 supermarkets. This rollout will allow shoppers to recycle all flexible plastic packaging which is not accepted through home recycling. This includes packaging such as crisp packets, food pouches, salad bags, biscuit, and cake wrappers.

Retail Gazette

"Every year, more than 380 million tonnes of plastic are produced worldwide. That's about the same as 2,700,000 blue whales – more than 100 times the weight of the entire blue whale population. Just 16% of plastic waste is recycled to make new plastics, while 40% is sent to landfill, 25% to incineration and 19% is dumped." - BBC News 

Railway sleepers made from recycled bottles, food packaging and other plastics

Network rail have installed railway sleepers made from recycled plastic into the mainline railway for the first time.

"The rectangular supports are used to hold up rails and to keep them the correct distance apart and are normally made of concrete or wood." - BBC News

These new sleepers have been designed to last for 50 years, they don't rot, split or degrade.

"Not only are these sleepers made from locally-sourced plastic waste, they need less maintenance and will last longer, underlining our commitment to create a greener, cleaner and more efficient rail network." - BBC News