I watched the first video about the plastic in the great pacific garbage patch, back in 2009, and since that time I have generally not thrown out ANY plastic. This even included plastics I would come across when say, eating out or having fast foods.
I instead have collected it and stored it till I could take it in for recycling.
This has even included plastics not taken by local municipality. For these plastics, I pay for them to be recycled by http://pmdrecycling.com.
I regularly follow and support https://theoceancleanup.com/ and am excited about their river interceptors. They are concentrating on stopping the plastics BEFORE they get into the ocean.
But what if you could be part of the solution in your own home.
Even though I am a strong promoter of recycling and reducing our plastic use (especially single-use), I have to admit that the storage of the plastics is an issue.
I dedicate a large bin in the kitchen and then a large schafer sized bin in the garage. But these are always a mess as the plastic pushes itself back out as it expands after depositing. It takes up a lot of room and is difficult to get into a manageable package size to take to recycling.
I recently came across an consumer appliance from One Clear Drop, that pre-processes film plastics into a tight, partially melted, block.
With the SPC (Soft Plastic Compactor), Once Clear Drop is allowing the consumer to be part of the pre-processing solution. These 'bricks' would reduce the volume needed at the recycling drop off centres, prevents cross contamination, prevent recycling conveyor maintenance, and reduce bacterial growth on plastics waiting for processing.