When Tim Miller turned to collecting recyclables to raise money to deal with his own medical issues, he soon ran into the problem of non-recyclable bottle caps. What the Miller family did to deal with this issue will help many more people than Tim.

The family did some research and found a Victorian charity organisation called Envision that turned plastic bottle lids into mobility aids for child amputees.

“Once I found out that, I thought that’s fantastic,” Mr Miller told ABC News.

“It ticks all the three boxes for us – it helps out with the environment, it helps out kids with a disability, and the other thing I like about it is that the group employs disadvantaged people.”

The miller family then launched the Lids 4 Kids project, partnering with local hospitality businesses to collect the lids from their own operations as well as acting as a collection point for residents in the area. These lids are then transported to Envision Hands’ warehouse in Melbourne for further processing.

At the Envision facility, the lids are cleaned and sorted into colours before being shredded and fed through an extruder. This creates a filament that can be used in 3D printing to produce the brightly coloured prosthetics, which are then sent to children in need across a number of developing countries.

The Miller family is now aiming to collect a quarter of a million bottle caps in the ACT region to help Envision continue their work.

 

Positive Action

• If you work for a business you believe would be well suited to supporting the Envision Hands initiative, contact Envision.
• To find out if your packaging items are recyclable, look for the Australasian Recycling Label or check RecyclingNearYou, Australia’s largest database of recycling information.

 

Subscribe to Positive Environment News
Positive Environment News has been compiled using publicly available information. Planet Ark does not take responsibility for the accuracy of the original information and encourages readers to check the references before using this information for their own purposes.