How to sort lids
It’s been amazing to see so many people pre-sorting their boxes at home. Bottle top lids are one of the streams that we recycle in-house. Our team of volunteers sort the lids by the type of plastic and the colour, we wash them and then shred them down before turning them into some really funky products (like these!).
Why sort them by colour?
The machines we use to transform your lids from trash to treasure melt the plastics. When they melt the colours merge together, so if we didn’t sort them by colour every item we create would be poo brown - gross!
Why sort them by the type of plastic?
Have you ever noticed the little number inside of a triangle on the bottle of a product (or the inside of a bottle top lid?). This is a plastic resin identification number that tells us the type of plastic an item is made from. The different types of plastics have different properties, some are soft and flexible others are nice and firm. We sort our lids by the type of plastic so that we can maintain that plastics properties but it also means we can recycle the products we create again at their end of life.
How to pre-sort your lids
Right now we only have one sustainability hub in Sydney which means that people all over Australia are missing out on sorting. We don’t want you to miss out which is why we’ve created this comprehensive guide to help you pre-sort at home.
Separate the types of plastic
1. How to tell the different types of plastics
Look for the plastic resin identification number, if you can’t find it do a squeeze test and compare with those lids that have numbers of them.
- Super super hard = 5
- Medium hard = 2
- Super soft = 4
2. Colour sorting
At BRAD we sort our plastics into the following colours, if you don’t have many of a colour bunch them together (aka metallics! Or blues!).
- Black
- Dark Blue
- Light Blue
- Orange
- Gold
- Pink
- Purple
- Red
- Silver
- White
- Yellow
Tip: we see so many innovative ways of people separating their items. Our favourite ways are reusing things that you already have at home. This could be old Kraft paper bags, toilet paper wrappers or bread bags!
If you follow this guide (for both colour and type sorting) please write the secret code “BRAD LOVES LIDS” on the inside of your box so that our sorters know to take your box straight to the “sorted” area.
Once a month we will do a golden ticket and give one lucky BRADie who pre-sorts their next recycling return free!
Send your lids using our BRAD Prepaid Label. Here's a list of what we accept/don't.