Life is made easier for green Cowbridge residents wanting to dispose of plastic waste
COWBRIDGE is now home to a second drop-off location for residents to recycle plastic waste not collected by the Vale of Glamorgan Council.
Items that TerraCycle take include make-up containers, pens, plastic toothbrushes, toothpaste tubes, crisp packets, Pringle containers, and all biscuit, nut, and cake wrappers, amongst many other things.
The new drop-off point, Cowbridge Recycles (TerraCycle) at Cowbridge Farm Shop, joins the first at Awesome Wales Zero Waste Shop.
Amy Greenfield, 39, opened the first Awesome Wales Zero Waste Shop in Barry and then opened a store on Cowbridge High Street in October 2020.
“We wanted to do something that made a difference. We wanted to make an eco-friendly shop right in the heart of where we live, where people could not just buy things but also exchange things,” she said.
“This isn’t the solution to the climate catastrophe that we’re in currently, but it’s a piece of the puzzle. It gives people a very real option to real problems that they have in terms of being able to source ethical, eco-friendly items and have a place to recycle plastic waste.”
According to data from Awesome Wales, over 50% of the waste collected from both shops (50,000kg) is crisp packets and more than a quarter (25,000kg) is waste from cake and biscuit wrappers.
Awesome Wales supplies TerraCycle bins upstairs in its Cowbridge shop and has a collection this Saturday at 2.30pm outside its Barry shop on Holton Road.
In both stores, customers can shop for zero-waste products free from plastic packaging that would normally head to landfill.
They have saved over 250,000 items of single-use plastic packaging from being created and disposed of by offering food refills.
Additionally, over 25,000 single-use plastic bottles have been saved by customers refilling their cleaning products, toiletries, oils, vinegars and syrups.
Cowbridge Recycles (TerraCycle) has also been operating since 2018 and opened the collection bins at Cowbridge Farm Shop a couple of weeks ago. Both the Cowbridge and Barry TerraCycle schemes are heavily supported by Sara Lewis from Ailgylchy/Recycling in Caerphilly.
Previously, members of Cowbridge Recycles would collect items at monthly drop-off meetings in a car park, with the waste going directly into volunteers’ cars.
Now there are collection bins where the waste can be dropped off seven days a week until 7pm.
In addition, most Friday mornings from 9.30am to 11.30am, volunteers will be packing up the waste and on hand to answer any questions about the recycling scheme for anyone who would like to drop into the Farm Shop at that time.
The waste is then shipped to a recycling plant in Darwen, Lancashire.
The plant processes these hard-to-recycle items and turns them into other plastics for use in children’s playground equipment, park benches, piping for the construction industry, and other household and garden items.
A spokesperson said: “The Cowbridge Farm Shop will give our project a massive boost in 2022. Farmer Michael Robins has very kindly given us the use of his barn, crates, and bags for this project.
“Now that we have two wonderful permanent drop-off points at Awesome Wales on Cowbridge High Street and at Cowbridge Farm Shop, we can spend less time collecting the waste and more time planning how we are going to reach out to the community to encourage more recycling awareness.”
TerraCycle is a global recycling company which collects and repurposes hard-to-recycle waste. It operates in over 20 countries and has over 60 million people helping to recycle billions of plastic waste through various innovative platforms.
It awards points for the waste it receives that can be converted to charity donations. The collections at Cowbridge raise money for Wales Air Ambulance, Velindre Cancer Centre and school PTAs.
Farmer Michael Robins added: “We’ve only started the scheme here two weeks ago, but so far it has gone over well with my customers at the farm shop, as it goes hand-in-hand with their values.”
There is also a sister scheme at St llltyd’s school, Llantwit Major, where the same items can be recycled, except soft plastic.
The community has also enjoyed becoming involved in the TerraCycle scheme.
Samantha Griffiths, 52, from the Vale of Glamorgan, said: “We’ve just started a village collection for the TerraCycle scheme at Cowbridge Farm Shop.
“On the first Saturday of every month, we’ll have a zero-waste box by our bench in the village where we’ll collect toothpaste tubes and crisp packets.
“It’s a great village activity and it gets everyone involved.”
