July 2022 Newsletter

“Why try to explain miracles to your kids when you could just have them plant a garden.” – Robert Brault

If you would like to volunteer or partner with our organization, we welcome friends of all ages and abilities, simply reply to this email and we will be in touch. If you would like to support us monetarily, please donate by clicking the image below. Supporters like you make our mission possible!

Thank you to the Rehoboth Social Podcast for highlighting the TAPTF Society and inviting Teresa on as a guest. They’re talking all things sustainable from limiting food waste to feeding our neighbors in need and what we can all do to make the future a little greener. 
Give it a listen here

Eco Plastic Products of Delaware

ECOP for short, are a non-profit organization who transform recycled plastic waste into new products such as the bench pictured above. They take #2 type recyclable plastics such as plastic grocery bags, bottles, take-out food containers, and bubble wrap, and create beautiful park benches, tables, bike racks, and handrails available in all the colors of the rainbow. They partner with the Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children as well as Goodwill of Delaware and Delaware County, collecting their plastic waste and giving it a new life as a functional work of art. Creating one recycled plastic park bench can take up to 30,000 grocery store bags and it keeps all that waste out of landfills. “Every county in America ought to have a facility like ours,” co-founder Jim Kelley says. “And if we can show that this works, it will spread.”The TAPTF Society has been proudly saving all of our #2 plastics to drop off at ECOP and we want to help facilitate you to do the same. If you would like to arrange for a monthly pick-up or drop-off of your #2 (only please!) clean plastic waste, simply respond to this email, and we will work together on making that happen. Keep your eye on our newsletters and social media for local collection day events in the future as well.

I already know what you’re thinking, “Another blog on plastics, Bridget? We know all this already, you never stop talking about it. Plastic sticks around in the environment for ages, threatening wildlife and spreading toxins. Its production contributes to global warming and it takes more water to make a plastic water bottle than the bottle can even hold. No one wants to hear a broken record.”

And I get that, I honestly do. No one wants to be a broken record. So today I have some excellent news, hope is on the way… researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden have developed a recycling method that replaces all fossil raw materials used in new plastic production with carbon atoms from mixed waste. The technique has the potential to eliminate the climate impact of plastic and may rid the air of excess carbon dioxide. 

What these researchers realized is that the carbon atoms within plastic waste was an untapped resource. That carbon usually heads to the landfill and is incinerated with the rest of the plastics’ components. This new thermochemical technology can target and capture the wasted carbon and use it as a raw material to produce new plastics of similar quality to those created with fossil fuels. Think about that, this is a double-edged win: both reducing the carbon emission of the old plastic and creating a new substance with that recycled carbon that is not made with fossil fuels. And if the process is powered by renewable energy,  the end result is a product with more than 95 percent lower climate impact than those produced today, which effectively means negative carbon emissions for the entire system. Wow.

And these carbon atoms needed for this process are everywhere. They can be harvested from any type of production that uses excessive heat. It is the basis of all sustainability methods: to simply use what you already have. And we have these carbon atoms in spades. Researchers tell us that enough of these atoms already exist to meet the needs of all global plastic production.Double wow. 

The process has already proven successful in a Swedish plant in collaboration with Borealis, a plastic manufacturer. Creating an economic structure to collect and use these carbon atoms can help incentivize this new form of recycling and the researchers are already working to make sure that facilities that currently produce plastic can change their process with minimal change to their facilities, making the switch over to this new recycling method easier than ever. 

So for now, continue separating and rinsing out your plastics before putting them in the recycling bin, send your #2 pieces to ECOP, and look forward to the day when you don’t have to hear me talk about plastic waste ever again!