While paper bread tags are becoming more common, plastic bread tags can still be hard to avoid.
However, by simply collecting and donating them, you can help provide wheelchairs for some of the world’s most underprivileged people.
It’s all thanks to the Bread Tags for Wheelchairs project, which sees the plastic tags recycled into products like bowls and serving boards, and the proceeds of sales used to buy wheelchairs for disadvantaged people in South Africa.
The whole concept is the brainchild of retired South African nurse Mary Honeybun. Passionate about the environment and helping others, she started the innovative recycling initiative in 2006. Some 15 years on, and more than 800 wheelchairs have been funded for people whom otherwise wouldn’t have been able to afford their own.
In 2019, Jenny Cooper, a South African who had migrated to Australia, started an Australian arm of the charity, based in Adelaide. Since then, Aussie Bread Tags for Wheelchairs has raised funds to buy over 75 wheelchairs and recycled over 10 tonnes of bread tags.
The tags are transported to Robe in South Australia’s south east- courtesy of a local trucking company that donates its services – where they are recycled in colourful products.
The recycling process takes around two hours, as the bread tags are compressed and melted, before being shaped into bowls and serving boards. It takes 1,870 bread tags to make one bowl.
Jenny Cooper - Bread Tags for Wheelchairs
We’re saving plastic from going into the ocean and landfill, and raising money at the same time, so it’s win-win really.
Anyone can drop their bread tags off at more than 500 collection points around Australia, which are then sent to Adelaide where they are sorted into colour by volunteers. Our colour sorters are mostly elderly or people with disability, so it’s also a community building exercise, showing how something small can make such a difference.
The donated wheelchairs are changing lives.
They are very grateful to receive the wheelchairs, with many not being mobile beforehand.
The whole thing has been extremely rewarding for me, just seeing the response. I really didn’t anticipate that it would grow like this in such a short time.
You can help...
Drop your plastic bread tags off at these local collection points:
- Urban Upcycle in Geelong
- Bakers Delight in Geelong West
- Surf Coast Hearing Clinic in Torquay
- Bakers Delight in Belmont
See a full list of collection points.