The Best Time to Recycle

Do you know there is in fact, a perfect time to recycle your plastics?

No, it’s not when the sun goes down to prevent advanced heat from the plastics, nor is it early mornings before traffic, and it’s not weekends, though those are all good ideas that can save on time and discomfort.

Let’s get annoying a little bit, like those recipe blogs…

Recycling is the action of converting waste into a reusable material. There are many types of recyclable materials and there are different types of recycling processes. To recycle plastics, the products have to be broken down, back to their original form of either PET or HDPE, and then they’re used to create something else. This saves the time it takes to mine for the raw natural resources to create new plastics and it also saves the environment which would have been affected to extract those natural resources. This end process of recycling is unfortunately not done in Jamaica … yet! It’s being investigated though, as this would be the creation of a new industry and with the high rates of consumption of products in plastic bottles here, would be a rather viable one.

However, to get to the level where Jamaica has a viable recycling industry, Jamaicans must first get into the practice of recycling their PET and HDPE plastics. There are one of two ways to get value from recycling:

1. You can get the emotional value of fulfilment by donating the plastics to any of the drop off locations island wide. There is a comprehensive list of locations on our website: www.recyclingja.com and on our social media pages @recyclingja.
2. You can get the financial value of the Deposit Return Scheme, which is $50 per kilogram of plastics that are brought to any of our 7 depots island wide, also listed on the website. If you have the space to store up to 68kgs (10 to 15 large garbage bags), call in for a free collection, but the payment per kilogram in this case is $48.

Now to the meat of the matter. The perfect time to recycle is TODAY! Of course, if you’re taking the plastics to the depots, they’re only open Mondays to Fridays 8am to 4pm, and the trucks will collect from your location during that same time frame. But… if you’re donating your plastics to a cage, your time to recycle is limitless. They are open 24/7 for your convenience.

So, now that you understand a major benefit to recycling and the values available to you, are you recycling your PET and HDPE plastics?

It seems simple enough, right? That’s because it is!

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