Plastic recycling experiments

I have been keeping an eye out for a cross cut paper shredder that would be powerful enough to shred HDPE milk bottles.

And recently I found one in my local LIDL store for £25 (bargain) it claimed that it could shred paperclips & staples and could cope with 7 sheets of A4 at once, guessing that this might be enough to shred an HDPE milk bottle I took the plunge.

Thankfully I can report that it seems to work a treat, all I need do is make sure that the milk bottles are properly washed and all traces of stickers and or glue are removed (cut out if necessary) as the chipped plastic needs to be as clean as is possible (I am even considering washing it in the washing machine maybe in an old pillow case with a zip).

And then cut the bottle in half down the seam and then each half in half again, so basically quartering the bottle top to bottom, add a couple of extra cuts in the corners just to flatten the quarter of bottle a little more and it feeds fine into the shredder.

Time to start building a “filabot” me thinks!