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Recycle Week – Bouygues E&S Continue to Support the Iron Man project

Recycle Week is Recycle Now’s flagship annual event which celebrates recycling across the nation while galvanising the public into recycling more of the right things, more often. Reflecting back on the week, Bouygues Energies and Services (Bouygues E&S) takes a look at how its sites are recycling their empty crisp packets into warm blankets for the homeless thanks to the Iron Man project, an ingenious charitable recycling solution.  

The average person in the UK eats around 150 bags of crisps a year. Unfortunately, these packets often end up in landfill, where they take around 80 years to decompose – meaning for most of us, every packet we’ve ever eaten is still intact. The Iron Man project is working to reduce this waste. Its founder, Miley Porritt, collects, cleans, and solders together empty crisp packets with an iron, creating a foil survival blanket that reflects body heat. Having experienced homelessness himself, Miley has a first-hand experience of just how needed these blankets are to stay warm and dry when sleeping outside. That’s why after creating the blankets, he then resells them to homeless charities to then be distributed to those who need them. 

After discovering the Iron Man project earlier this year, Bouygues E&S sites have collected and donated thousands of cleaned crisp packets. Their combined efforts have helped create over 1,000 blankets, several of which Bouygues E&S has since purchased to donate to Ukrainian relief efforts. One of our Cambridgeshire sites enhanced their recycling efforts even more by delivering them sustainably via one of their new e-cargo bikes.

E-bike

More recently, Bouygues E&S donated three ironing presses to the Iron Man project, meaning the ironing board Miley was previously using can be put to rest while his production line is fast-tracked. Nikki Mortimer, Performance Administrator at Bouygues E&S, has been instrumental in co-ordinating the efforts to support the Iron Man project:  

"We're delighted to continue supporting the Iron Man project, maximising our recycling efforts while helping homeless charities receive sustainable and affordable blankets. It's been wonderful to see the collection of crisp packets be embraced whole-heartedly by our staff, and very gratifying to see the finished product ourselves to understand just how much it helps people."  

blanket
Nikki Mortimer and the team at Broomfield Hospital showcasing the blankets. 

With the Iron Man project accepting donations from businesses and individuals alike, this Recycle Week offers the perfect opportunity to reflect on whether there’s any crisp packets in your life that could be recycled for a better purpose!  

  

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