Recycling Bread Tags

Chantelle has been collecting bread clips for her teacher at school. Now that we are homeschooling her she was wondering what to do with them so we decided to find out and it is fascinating.

Chantelle told me they were for wheelchairs. I was like how can they make wheelchairs out of bread tags? I took her literally, they collected the bread tags and took them to a specific  company who pays for them. Then the money is used to purchase the wheel chairs.

Bread tags for wheelers chairs started in South Africa in 2006. They collect bread tags and a plastics company zibo buys them for a small amount per kilo. 

We have 200 bread tags so far. I weighed them and they weighed 77gms. Wow that is not a lot at all. So by my calculations you would need 2600 bread tags to make one kilo. That’s a lot of bread. It takes approximately 200 kilos of bread tags to gain enough money to purchase 1 wheelchair. 

The company zibo recycles the bread tags and makes them into seedling trays. Bread Tags for wheelchairs use the money to provide wheelchairs for the needy. About 500kg of bread tags are collected per month in South Africa funding 2-3 wheelchairs.

People who are aware of this program have been either taking breadtags to South Africa or posting them over. In August 2018 bread tags for wheelchairs  set up collection points in Australia to promote the program and increase collection of bread tags.

In February 2019 the first batch of bread tags were given to an Australian recycler transmutation-Reuse, Reduce,Recycle they are based in Robe, South Australia. They have agreed to buy regular batches of bread tags so we can start recycling in Australia.

At the moment some bread tags are being recycled in South Australia and the rest are still sent to South Africa. The goal is to have all the Australian bread tags recycled in Australia. With just the money sent over to purchase the wheel chairs.

So why did they decide to use bread tags? The answer to this is because no one else does it.

The bread tags are normally just thrown away and because of their size they are dangerous to wildlife.  You can even send in broken ones because they get melted down to make new products.

The organisation is run by volunteers only. A community network of people volunteering because they love to recycle and help. No wages are drawn at all. 

So save your bread tags, recycle them, help the environment and make a difference to people who are in need of a wheelchair. It’s a win-win for everyone..

www.breadtagsforwheelchairs.co.za