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The Best of 2007: Reduce, Reuse, Recoup

October 1st, 2007

The first recycled CD cover had been used for the track “Remind You” by rock band Recoup. The song was influenced by the impact humans have on the earth, and to go with it, ReCoup thought it would be appropriate to use a totally recycled product for the CD sleeve. The lead singer Pieter’s girlfriend who is a passionate environmentalist, came up with the idea of re-using crisp packets, turned inside out, with a sleeve of recycled cardboard inside for the cover.

The reason why crisp packets were chosen, is that they are hard to recycle, the perfect shape for a CD, durable and when turned inside are all uniform silver in colour. Apart from actually re-using things that would have gone to land fill sites, ReCoup wants people and companies to think “outside the box” and be creative regarding what can be re-used and recycled. The band also proved that it is not that difficult or more expensive to use recycled products and encourages people to be environmentally conscious.

Why crisp packets?

Recoup wanted to use a material that currently only has a single use before being disposed off to landfill. “We live in a throw away society wasting energy on producing new resources just so we can throw it in the bin again why not be innovative and reuse our resources.”

A market already exists for recycling paper, card, glass, steel, aluminium and plastics of certain types but not crisp packets. Crisp packets are made from metallised plastic film, polypropylene is laminated onto metal foil which makes them very hard to recycle, separating the plastic from the metal is virtually impossible and not economically viable. Crisp packets are light, strong, water impermeable and turned inside out they are all (mostly) silver. They are the perfect shape for a CD cover and the bigger bags work well for posting letters.

Recoup enlisted the help of family, friends, work colleagues, freecyclers young and old who saved their crisp packets to be reused and volunteers who set up collection boxes at schools, offices, boroughs, universities and bars. Once collected the crisp packets were sorted and broken packets removed. The majority of the packets were washed by hand in buckets. They were then turned inside out and hung on the line to dry. Sleeves of recycled cardboard were inserted followed by the CD and then sealed with recycled paper stickers with the caption “I use to be a crisp packet!” Reduce Reuse Recycle ReCoup.

To watch the video for the song ‘Remind you’ and to watch the video click the link below.