Even if you bring home as few bags as possible — using reusable bags, carrying purchases home with your own two hands — soft plastics sill accumulate. I certainly have a collection with one flimsy plastic sack filled with dozens or hundreds of others. I plan to do something with it… eventually.
Unfortunately, there aren’t a ton of options for what to do with those soft plastics, as most recycling facilities can’t accept them. But no one likes seeing them end up in oceans and rivers and stuck up in trees. So I was excited to see the Clear Drop Soft Plastic Compactor (CPC) at CES. It’s a pre-recycler for your home that turns hundreds of bags into a solid brick that’s easier to transport. Certain facilities can accept the bricks for recycling.
Clear Drop works with 95 percent of soft plastics, sucking up bags, bubble wrap, ziplocks, package wrap and cling film into its maw. It then compresses and heats the plastic to form a compact eight by twelve by four inch brick. I asked Matt Daly, Clear Drop’s head of product, what the compactor can’t take and I was told you can’t add ping pong balls, IV bags and camera film. Easy enough.
A compacted brick the Clear Drop CPC produced. (Amy Skorheim for Engadget)
It was satisfying to see the little slot on the top gobble up the plastic bags Daly fed it. The Clear Drop wasn’t set to smash and heat at the show, but I was assured by another Clear Drop rep that any plastic smell produced during operation was minimal and the company performed safety tests to ensure the machine didn’t create any harmful emissions.
Daly said it would take about a month for most households to create a brick, which translates to around a 30 gallon trash bag full of other bags. Once that brick is created, it can be shipped to one of Clear Drop’s partner facilities and pre-paid USPS shipping envelops are included. They work with multiple US-based recycling facilities and do audits to ensure the bricks are actually being recycled.
Of course, I was a little disappointed the bricks couldn’t be tossed in my blue curbside bin, but Daly said they’re working to bring more recycling partners on board and the ultimate goal is to create an infrastructure that would eventually include municipal recycling. Shipping the bricks somewhere feels a little counterproductive, eco-wise. And the machine itself is not cheap. The price is split up over the course of two years, but it adds up to $1,400.
I’m happy to see someone somewhere is doing something to address a pretty clear problem. While it’s not perfect, this is probably the best household-level solution I’ve seen to that can ensure your bags don’t go down some sea turtle’s throat.
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