Story: Patrick Amber
Many local authorities, including ours, apparently don't have the facilities to separate bottle tops for recycling so they end up in landfill. GHS Recycling in Portsmouth collects and recycles milk bottle tops for charities and pay £30 for every 500 kgs on a pro rata basis. So far they have recycled over 30 tonnes since they began the scheme 2 years ago.
I started collecting about the same time. I haven't got quite that many, but ample for making our first bottle-top mosaic at Burngreave Chapel.
The idea for making a mosaic was inspired by the incredible well dressings that The Friends of Burngreave Chapel & Cemetery have composed with help from local schools and visitors over the last few years. Sunday 14th July saw the 5th annual well dressing (see Cemetery well dressing in the August 2013 issue). A new design was worked out and petals were collected to contribute to the making of the image. About 5 visitors to the chapel and myself were involved in the making.
A frame that displayed a broken mosaic was collected from Freegle. When the remaining mosaic tiles were removed the original design was still visible. A few of us (attending the regular Sunday afternoon creative workshops at the chapel,) set about arranging our collected bottle-tops over the original design. This meant working out how detailed the tops would allow and what colours we could use and where.
The image resembled a figure of 8 – Celtic knot and the infinity symbol – Somehow significant given that hard plastics such as bottle-tops can take an estimated 10000 years to bio-degrade. If they are sitting in landfills sealed and compacted with all of the other trash and bottles with no air moving, they won't decompose at all. A standard PETE (Polyethylene Terephthalate) plastic bottle will never rot.
The flower-petal well dressing will last but a few days once put out on display. Wouldn't it be something if the bottle-top mosaic only lasted as long?