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Moses Gate Country Park near Bolton had beautiful wooden walkways and bridges, now they have fallen into disrepair – boarded off with warning signs.

The lakeside decking is warped and covered in broken chicken wire to help prevent slippage on the green slime that has bedded into the wood.

It’s a disappointing sight, far removed from the original inspiration.

A tax payer investment now lost to the community.

Exponential Growth of the Recycled Plastics Industry

In 2010, three brothers from Bolton decided to launch a business, ‘Kedel Limited’, to recycle waste plastic into construction products.

Their Plastic Wood (VIDEO) won ‘Best Recycled Product’ at the MRW National Recycling Awards in 2015 and was commended for Innovation at Pendle Council’s Business Awards in 2016.

Kedel’s biggest challenge has been to match their production capacity with a demand rising at 30% each year. Their 1000 sq ft unit in Colne, Lancashire, soon became inadequate and Kedel now employ over 20 people in a 25,000 sq ft facility in Burnley.

Popular Products

Kedel’s most popular products are decking (VIDEO Decking Case Study), gates, fencing and cladding, primarily because once installed, they are unlikely to need maintenance of any kind in our lifetimes.

The Kedel 25-Year-Guarantee is very conservative. Scientists estimate the length of time it will take for plastic waste to degrade is over 450 years.

UV protected colour is added to the material during manufacture. No painting will ever be needed. It just stays looking good year in year out.

Recycled plastic decking has better slip resistance than wood in independent tests, even when wet, and green algae has nothing to bed into. It can be mopped or jet sprayed off in minutes.

Housing Associations such as ‘Your Housing’ in South Manchester and ‘Whitefriars’ in the Midlands have been using their maintenance and replacement budgets to swop wooden fencing for recycled plastic for several years. (VIDEO Fencing Case Study)

According to Paul Stanners, Housing Manager at ‘Your Housing’ in Partington, Manchester:

“Over the last 7 years, we’ve not had to replace one single panel, even after a car went through three panels. The concrete posts broke, but we just replaced them, picked up the recycled plastic panels and put them back in.”

The ‘Age of Plastic’ Challenges

The Universities of Georgia and California at Santa Barbara, along with Sea Education Association (SEA), have calculated that between 1950 and 2015, we produced over 8.3 billion metric tonnes of plastic worldwide. A mere 9 percent has been recycled, 12 percent incinerated and 79 percent placed in landfill or has found its way into the natural environment. It has been suggested that by 2050 there may be more plastic than fish in our oceans.

How we use and dispose of our plastic is clearly something we must address urgently.

How to order

If you care about the environment or if you just want to avoid the cost of labour and materials for future maintenance and replacement of wood, Kedel can help with a wide range of standard products and an experienced design team that can help with anything bespoke.

It seems like the intelligent economic choice and lowers the carbon footprint of construction which is great for the environment.

Call for a Quote: 01282 861325 or email sales or visit www.kedeltrade.co.uk or click to get a free ticket to meet us at the Build Show.