The UK supermarket chain Co-op have announced their plans to set up ‘reverse vending machines’ at five music festivals this summer – with the machines taking event-goers plastic bottles and recycling them to make staff uniforms.
This will be the third time Co-op has hosted the machines, with the brand first using them in 2018 at music festivals including Download, and Latitude, and then again at eight events in 2019. This year, the machines will be found at Latitude, Leeds, Reading, Creamfields and the Isle of Wight Festival – with two machines provided by recycled product supplier Reborn at each event.
The machines accept both aluminium and plastic, with the former recycled for other aluminium products and the latter shredded and made into pellets. These are then used to make fabric for clothing, as well as merchandise and other products such as umbrellas, furniture and worktops.
Plastic bottles sold by the retailer will also come with a deposit which you receive back as store credit when you recycle it, in a bid to motivate shoppers to return their waste and close the loop.
“Festival-goers have previously responded well to the reverse vending machines in our pop-up stores and it’s fantastic that we now have a festival-themed closed-loop system in place for the bottles and cans we collect,” said Co-op director of marketing experience Amanda Jennings.
This is not the supermarket chain’s only stride into the circular economy, with a new in-store recycling scheme launched at the beginning of the month that will see plastic collection points established within 2,300 of its stores. The collected packaging will reportedly be made into plastic granules and repurposed to make products such as bin liners. The retailer is also set to become the first UK supermarket with fully recyclable food packaging, acting in service of its mission to reach 100% recyclability for its own brand supply chain by the end of 2021.
