With more emphasis being placed on taking care of and saving the environment each year, Oasis Water prides itself in doing its part to help drive and promote recycling across the country, especially focusing on recycling PET plastic.
Oasis water bottles are made from PET plastic and are easily recyclable. You might have seen the PET recycle bins at more than 350 Oasis outlets nationwide.
So why PET, you might ask?
PET is 100% recyclable. And, according to PETCO, a local recycling company specialising in the recycling of PET bottles and products, PET is lightweight, strong, and superior compared to other packaging options and its environmental footprint.
When recycled, PET can further greatly reduce fuel use, energy consumption, and greenhouse gas emissions.
And:
- PET recycling creates jobs by providing a source of income for plastic recyclers, all while helping to save the planet’s virgin resources.
- Environmental footprint can be explained as the footprint linked to energy demand and production resulting in Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions.
In short, PET stands for Polyethylene Terephthalate. You might have seen the #1 polymer identification code (in a triangle) on or near the bottom of PET containers or bottles.
THE PET RECYCLING PROCESS
PET bottles are collected, flattened, and bundled up into big blocks (baled) and delivered to the recycling plant where they are colour sorted, washed, chopped into smaller particles (granulated), re-washed, and extruded (melted down and then made into long thin strings of plastic). Those strings are then cut into small pieces (pellets), before those are then re-used (as recycled plastics) for making a number of items we enjoy every day including fibre filling for our pillows, sleeping bags, and winter coats, carpets in cars, fleece shirts but most importantly as recycled PET containers.
Once recycled, from either pre-consumer (such as factory off-cuts) or post-consumer (household) material sources, it is called rPET or Recycled Polyethylene Terephthalate.
Help do your part and recycle PET products:
- Most PET plastic products are beverage bottles, but increasingly other types of packaging are also made of PET. Don’t simply throw away anything made of PET with other rubbish or as litter on the street.
- Do separate your PET plastic from your other waste and put it out separately in a clear bag on garbage collection day.
- DO remove PVC shrink-wrap labels from your bottles.
- Do check with your local collector/recycler about PET punnets/trays. PET trays and punnets are currently not being recycled on a large scale as not all of them are identifiable and many are made of mixed polymers or with additives, thus making recycling difficult.
- Do pick up PET bottles that you see lying around on the street and elsewhere and put them in a recycling container.
- Do look out for the special, clearly marked plastics collection containers at many public places such as shopping centres and use them to deposit your used beverage bottles.
- Do join recycling schemes at your local school or other recycling initiatives in your community.
- Do teach your family to be aware of the importance of recycling – especially of recycling PET bottles – and encourage them to talk to their friends about it as well.
- Do take your clear bag of separated PET to your closest collection point or drop-off point if your municipality does not pick it up separately. If the Municipality has a recycling collection scheme in place, then the bag will be collected. If not, a collector recycling it for money may pick it up, or if it does end up on a landfill site, then packaging it separately will make it easier for waste pickers to detect it and recycle it.
- Do visit www.petco.co.za or www.mywaste.co.za to find the closest collection point to drop off our PET for recycling.
To find out more about Oasis, visit www.oasiswater.co.za. For more information about Petco visit petco.co.za.
Oasis Water is a proud member of Petco.
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