When Yuin man Mitch Skuta was having photos taken of his young family on a beach in East Gippsland he was deeply saddened by the amount of plastic waste.
So he went down a plastic rabbit hole on the internet – and came out the other side with a business that hand makes home gardening tools from recycled bottle tops.
His business, Gardening on Country, partnered with Precious Plastic Melbourne – the Victorian chapter of a global open source organisation that works with small businesses to create moulded recycled plastic items.
They source plastic bottle caps – the ones that can’t go in curb-side recycling bins because they’re too small – from not-for-profit Lids4Kids and sort them into colours and types, so they can go through a shredding machine, then be melted down and injected into moulds.
“We’re picking up the scraps and making some useful products,” Mr Skuta said.
“There's lots of big businesses that are using whole bottles to create different types of products and I just wanted to focus on the little stuff.
“The biggest thing for me is just understanding that some places don't even attempt to recycle them, they say put them in your waste bin, which goes to landfill and is just mind blowing.”
One of the major issues with recycling plastic is that different types don’t usually work together.
Gardening on Country uses high density polyethylene, which is strong and has a bit of flexibility.
“They will last out in the elements but it's really easy to recycle and reuse again, so if, for instance, it was to break or wear then we can repurpose that, we can reshred it and make another tool out of it,” Mr Skuda said.
Different plastics can degrade in the sun, so Mr Skuta is running tests on his products to see how well they last – and so far, they’re standing up well.
“I’ve got some sitting on my shed roof as we speak, and I just go up and check them every now and again and they’re perfect, nothing's happened to them so far,” he said.
“We get that question a lot from people about how long will they last, well, plastic can potentially last for last a lifetime, it's not going to go anywhere.”
