Have you got video tapes that you’ve been hanging onto for years, hoping you’ll find an enthusiast who will enjoy watching them and take them off your hands? As technology moved on video’s have been left on the shelf gathering dust. VHS tapes and cassettes are now rarely accepted at recycling centres and are generally sent to landfill. Few charity shops take them too. Which means lots of unloved tapes languish in homes of people who hang on in hope that they’ll not have to bin and a recycling option will be found.
Meet David, in August, he came along to our Rubbish Revolutionaries session and told us about his adventures in decluttering and finding recycling solutions. Like us all he had a small number of videos which he didn’t want to throw away. His recycling research turned up a company called Environmental Media Solutions who could recycle them but was told he needed to gather 700 videos before they would be able to come to London to collect them. Knowing others in a similar situation he decided to start a video collection point. He put the word out to friends, neighbours, he told his local freecycle network and local charity shops and used his garage to store the tapes he collected. He amassed the 700 over 3 years.
David signed up to Rubbish Diet saying “there’s always new things to learn” and now he has decided to go beyond the bin and help other rubbish dieters to clear video tape clutter without sending it to landfill.
David is open up his garage to be a collection point once again from the 31st of October. If you want to donate your video tapes to the collection you can email David ondswt@btinternet.com Not on email? Contact us on 07880 931 537tionary!
http://recyclenation.com/2015/01/how-to-recycle-vhs-tapes
In 2013, a woman named Marion Stokes passed away and left behind 140,000 VHS tapes full of local and national news broadcasts. While you probably do not have anywhere near that many VHS tapes sitting around your house, even a small number of them can seem like a big problem because they are so tough to recycle. Like cassette tapes and other old media made of plastic, there simply are not a lot of places that recycle VHS tapes. We share several places where you can recycle them, as well as a couple ideas for reusing them.
What are VHS tapes made of?
VHS tapes are made with two different types of plastic. The outer cassette is typically made of polypropylene (PP) or #5 plastic. The inside ribbon is made with Mylar, a type of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) or #1 plastic. The ribbon is coated with iron oxide and other metals, some of which are hazardous. Fun fact: Mylar is also used to make the ribbon on cassette tapes and 5¼” floppy disks.Why is it important to recycle VHS tapes?
VHS tapes are made of plastic, which will never biodegrade. If they end up in a landfill they will sit there for thousands of years – and over time the hazardous metals on the tape may leech into the ground. If they end up in an incinerator they can release chemicals such as dioxins into the air we breathe. It may be hard to recycle VHS tapes, but it can be done, so please put the extra effort into making sure they do not end up in the waste stream.How to recycle VHS tapes
One sure way to recycle VHS tapes is to send them to Green Disk, a Washington-based company that specializes in recycling all kinds of e-waste. There is a small charge for their recycling services, but you can ship up to 25 pounds of material for the same price, so see if your friends or neighbors have old VHS tapes they want to get rid of. Or take this as an opportunity to clean out other old electronics you do not want, including jump drives, cell phones, pagers, PDAs, portable cassette players, Beta tapes, camera film, and rechargeable batteries.
In many communities, VHS tapes are considered e-waste and can be recycled through the regular e-waste collection program. Different programs accept different things and have varying policies about where and when to leave items, so check with your local government waste management agency for more details. Here are a couple examples: Santa Barbara residents can drop off e-waste at one of three local collection centers, or have it picked up through the bulky waste disposal program. A private contractor in Will County, Illinois (which includes towns such as Aurora and Naperville) will pick up a limited number of e-waste items every year. Citizens can also take unwanted goods to one of several community partners that accept VHS tapes and other types of e-waste.
Some places have businesses or nonprofits that specialize in VHS tape recycling. In Columbia, Missouri a group called Alternative Community Training (ACT) takes VHS tapes for recycling. All the proceeds are used to support their job training programs for people with disabilities.
How to reuse VHS tapes
Depending on where you live, you may be able to find a thrift store, library or specialty retailer that is interested in VHS tapes. In Eugene, Oregon St. Vincent de Paul will gladly accept them and put them on their retail thrift store shelves. They find that people with vacation homes often have old VCRs and like to have a stack of movies to watch themselves or show the grandkids when they come to visit.
If you have rare or collectible movies on VHS, you may be able to sell them online using a site like Ebay.
For the most part, however, if you want to see VHS tapes get reused you will need to do it yourself. This blog post on the site Top 10 of Everything and Anything has some fun ideas for turning VHS tapes into bookshelves, clocks, pencil cases and more.
Or perhaps you can draw inspiration from artists using VHS tapes in their work. In 2010 Lorenzo Durantini created an amazing undulating tower from over 2,000 VHS tapes. Artists also use the magnetic tape inside the VHS tapes, as is demonstrated by these pictures on Pinterest.
How to reuse and recycle VHS tape cases
VHS tapes were typically sold in cases of various kinds. Some were made of plastic; some were made of cardboard. The cardboard ones are easy to recycle; simply place them in your recycling bin along with other types of paper.
Once you find a place that recycles VHS tapes (either in your community or online), check to see if they accept the plastic cases. Many of them will, but not all of them. If you cannot find a good place to dispose of plastic cases, consider reusing them. They are good for all kinds of things, from storing electronics and crayons to making cute purses and notebook covers.
About the author
Sophia Bennett is a freelance writer based in Eugene, OR. Her work has been featured in more than a dozen magazines, newspapers and blogs. She is a dedicated home recycler, an avid thrift store shopper and a huge compost nerd.
Sophia's other professional experience include six years with the St. Vincent de Paul Society of Lane County, an internationally recognized leader in the field of nonprofit waste-based business development, and a year as an economic development and recycling coordinator in the U.K. She's volunteered with the Oregon State University Extension Service Compost Specialist program and Willamette Farm and Food Coalition. In her spare time she enjoys cooking, reading, crafts, gardening and spending time with her husband and twin daughters.
I have hundreds of old VHS tapes in the hope someone will devise a way of recycling them – I don't want to consign them to landfill. Am I being realistic?
Either you've all been conferring or there's a natural cut-off point after which householders of Britain will no longer tolerate old video cassettes. Either way, since the New Year I've had an abundance of emails wanting rid without recourse to landfill, where they would remain in perpetuity.
I have heard of a resurgence in interest in collecting old tapes. But this is a tiny movement of enthusiasts collecting limited VHS copies of limited-release Disney films imbued with film history. Don't expect anybody to take your collection ofBergerac tapes recorded straight from the TV some time in the 1980s.
Another reader, Angela, writes that not even "the lowliest of charity shops wants any more [cassettes]. I tried". Yes, almost nobody sees them as a resource, despite the fact that plenty of resources went into making them in the first place: a VHS tape took about one-sixth of a gallon of petroleum to make.
Many of you are frustrated that local authority recycling schemes often don't take old VHS tapes. This leaves you dependent on bespoke solutions which are a) unlikely to deal with the 1.5bn old VHS tapes that industry estimates suggest lurk in UK houses and b) often desperately crafty – turning VHS cassette boxes into charming trays for hors d'oeuvres, for example.
The real (reel?) issue is that magnetic tape is coated in organic solvents, including toluene. All you find are "boutique" recycling solutions for the tape itself: trail it around an allotment, where it will act as a bird scarer, or donate to unspecified artists and makers who will crochet the tape into other stuff. Again, this is no solution to the 1.5bn cassette problem.
No, Lisa, you are not being unrealistic in hoping for a true recycling solution. I'm happy to report that I've found one company that has invested in a recycling system for tapes, CDs and DVDs: Bristol-based ems-europe.co.uk will accept (by prior arrangement) 100 items in their cases per household for free, excluding postage, which you will need to pay. They have a machine to disassemble tapes and a business selling reconditioned tape back to the film industry. I'm not saying they're ready to deal with 1.5bn old tapes, but they might be able to help move the VHS issue off pause.
Green crush
Richard Mabey has to be one of the greatest champions of the outdoors Britain has ever seen. He set the trail for Ray Mears and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall with his foraging opus Food For Free in 1972 and examined how our natural psyche was influenced by plants in Flora Britannica (1996). Not one to confine himself to the usual poetic vistas, he's passionate about "edgelands", where inhabited and wild land intersect. Hear all about them when he gives the University of Essex's Annual Burrows Lecture at 7pm on 13 March (essex.ac.uk/events).
Greenspeak: Biospheric appeal
Conventional wisdom tells us that if we think being eco saves us cash, we will help save the planet. Not so. Dutch researchers have found that we are more likely to be motivated by the idea of caring for the natural world.
If you have an ethical dilemma, send an email to Lucy atlucy.siegle@observer.co.uk
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/jan/27/can-i-recycle-vhs-tapes
What to do With Your VHS Tapes: Essential Answer
Shilpa Sarkar, ’11, from Stanford, Calif.