My Online Diary

Bottle Tops 2008

Posted 28 Dec 2008

On the 1st Jan 2008 I started throwing bottle tops into a bag. Whenever we finish a bottle of milk or whatever, we wash it, throw the bottle into the recycling bin and its top goes into the bag. [Factoid: 1L milk creates 1kg of CO2]

Now it's the end of the year and here's the tally:

Bottle tops 2008
Milk bottle size plastic caps
Yellow	"Calcitrim" milk, 1 or 2 litres	71
Red	Cream, 500ml or 1 litre	27
Blue	Standard homogenised milk, 1 or 2 litres	26
Dark blue	"Keri" or similar Orange juice, 1-3 litres	4
Light blue	Trim milk, 1 or 2 litres	3
White	Vinegar, 2 litres	3
Brown	Cocolate milk, 1 or 2 litre	2
Green	milk?	1
Dark green		1
Soft drink size plastic caps
Red	Coca Cola, 600m to 2.5 litre	21
White	Diet Coke, 600m to 2.5 litre	6
Silver	Schwepps, 600m to 2.5 litre	4
Blue	Sprite, 600m to 2.5 litre	3
Orange	Fanta, 600m to 2.5 litre	2
Black	Coke Zero, 600m to 2.5 litre	1
Gold	Schwepps, 600m to 2.5 litre	1
Misc plastic caps
Black	Soy sauce	2
White	Liquid honey	1
Clear	Water	1
Misc metal caps
	Pams oil	1
	Appletize	1
	Grapetize	1
	Coca Cola	1
	Villa Maria wine	1
	Haagen beer	1
	Bundaburg beer	1
Black	unknown	1
Grand total		188

I didn't keep corks from wine bottles - there weren't many. And I didn't remember to keep all the metal bottle caps.

Apart from those exceptions this is a pretty good record of the number of bottles (mostly plastic) thrown out in our recycling bin. This is for two adults and a 1 year old. It includes bottles brought in by friends that were discarded here.

We keep a few bottles (and their tops) for reuse, so they're not counted here. I'd guess they would total less than 30 bottles reused for 2008.

So - 188 is my benchmark. Lets see how much we can reduce that in 2009.

This project is kinda inspired by http://www.365daysoftrash.blogspot.com/

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Page last modified on 10 June 2009 at 03:32 PM