Important Facts
- In the UK, 9.2 billion bottles are disposed of a year
- 7–12% of this waste is recycled at present
- 11% of household waste is plastic
- £470.00 is spent per household on packaging every year
- 200,000 tones of plastic rubbish are being sent 8,000 miles to China each year for recycling.
- 33% must be recycled by 2015 (EU: 94/62/EC)
- The embodied energy of a standard virgin HDPE plastic milk container is =80MJ/kg (total energy used in the products creation)
- By producing design with the URE process we can reduce this energy dependent by half.
Below shows the energy savings of a recycled URE designs (in a direct comparison to a virgin the product).
|
Mass of an average chair Embodied energy of virgin HDPE Embodied energy of recycled HDPE A saving of |
= = = = |
8kg 80MJ/kg 40MJ/kg ×8 |
| Energy saving per design (chair) Compared to a virgin equivalent |
= |
320MJ |
| 1 unit (1kWh) = 3.6MJ | = | 89kWh |
This 89kWh for every design equates to 89 hours running a 1kW one bar electric fire, or 4450 hours of a 20W CFL light bulb.
