Drop your ecobricks at PnP Hermanus
Pick n Pay Hermanus has thrown its weight behind the fight against single-use plastics. The store now boasts a trolley at the entrance where shoppers and residents can drop off their eco-bricks.
These bricks will be taken to a collection centre in Cape Town on a weekly basis where they will be distributed and used to build sustainable structures such as benches and to improve the school grounds of 12 schools.
An eco-brick is a 500 ml, 1 litre, 2 litre or 5-litre plastic bottle compacted to capacity with non-recyclable material. Material to be used includes bread packets, cellophane, cereal packets, chips packets, chocolate wrappers, cling wrap, dog and cat food pellet packets, foil packets, plastic bags and packets, plastic or foil packaging for pills and medication, polystyrene trays and containers, till slips, etc It is very important that all materials need to be cut up into small pieces and that they should be clean and dry. No sand is to be used.
There should not be any air gaps in the bottle as you are producing a brick substitute. A 500 ml eco-brick should weigh about 200g, a 1-litre eco-brick at least 350g and a 2-litre eco-brick must be at least 500g. The bottles must have their lids on.
These “bricks” are used to build classrooms, bus stops, benches, you name it. Keep in mind that they also save natural resources by substituting for clay bricks. These eco-bricks are bone hard once compacted tightly and are nearly impossible to break in half. Anton Odendal of BirdLife Overberg tried his hand at creating eco-bricks and these are his observations:
*Do not remove the label on the bottle: it is very difficult to get the glue off the bottle and it becomes a very sticky affair as one handles the bottle continuously. Those’nipples’on the bottle need to be compacted until bone hard before you add layer after layer of plastics and other material.
•My bottle was compacted really hard at the top, but I could not get to the bottom to remove the air bubbles. Use something thin like a knitting needle to compact the plastic from the side of the bottle downwards and then force the stuff in the middle down with a heavy item like a wooden spoon. Most importantly, one needs to use stuff that one can swivel and bring back to the top without the plastic coming back with it,” says Anton.
As part of their ongoing effort to reduce plastic waste, Pick n Pay has started introducing 100% recyclable plastic bags, manufactured from recycled plastic with no added calcium. In addition, an even broader range of reusable bags at affordable prices will be made available to help customers move away from single-use bags. The retailer will also no longer provide plastic straws at checkouts; they will be replaced with paper straws which will only be available at the cold drink kiosks.
In addition, Pick n Pay has introduced recycled PET (RPET) in a range of its own products. The plastic punnets used in the packaging of their fresh fruit and vegetables contain a minimum of 25 % RPET. The use of RPET will be rolled out to more categories, such as the PnP and No Name carbonated soft drink bottles – these will include a minimum of 20% RPET. PnP’s dishwashing liquids and all-purpose cleaners will include a minimum of 25% recycled material.