Cutteslowe Horticultural Therapy Nurseries are now an official Eco-Brick Bank! You can get involved in building their community centre with greener materials, thanks to this simple method of saving non-recyclable plastic from going to landfill.

It’s super-easy to turn your waste plastic into an eco-brick - here’s how you can do it:

1. Rinse out a used plastic bottle
   It can be of any size, but it needs to be clean. Small water bottles, big fizzy pop bottles, milk cartons, detergent containers all work - just make sure you’ve still got the lids as well!
2. Insert your plastic
   You could save up plastic as you use it to fill the eco-brick all at once, or pop it in the bottles as you go. This is a great way to avoid putting plastic packaging in the bin: the non-recyclable film that’s often wrapped around supermarket products like toilet tissue and tea bag boxes; crisp and biscuit packets; plastic bags; cling film; polystyrene… you can find a comprehensive list here. Make sure it’s all clean before it goes in!
3. Get a stick and poke the plastic down as tightly as possible
   This will make your eco-brick strong, and will mean you can fit in even more plastic! But don't overdo it: if the plastic is pushing against the top too much, it may cause the lid of the bottle to come off.
4. Weigh your ecobrick
   It can’t be too heavy, or it will be difficult to build with. The ideal weight for an eco-brick should be 0.3g per ml that the bottle can hold: so a 2l bottle should weigh 0.66kg, a 1.5l bottle should weigh around 0.45kg, a 500ml bottle around 0.15kg and so on.
5. Take your ecobrick to the Cutteslowe Horticultural Therapy Nurseries in Cutteslowe Park! If you want to let them know you’re coming, or if you have any questions about the eco-brick scheme, you can call Mikaela or Noel on 01865 511 938 or email [email protected]. Happy making!