Blog Headlines:

Benches

Green, Eco-friendly Garden and Park Benches

Key advantages of Recycled Plastic Benches:

No maintenance - lifetime cost benefits - 100% reduction in bench maintenance and replacement costs
Will never rot - Long after wooden benches have rotted away this will look much the same as when first installed
Graffiti resistant - Easily clean graffiti off with ultra fine wire wool and WD4
Does not warp, crack and no splinters for little fingers
Reduced carbon footprint - a key selling point that is very attractive to government and institutional buyers

Kedel's recycled plastic benches are made to last

Recycled Plastic Benches from Kedel are demolishing competition from the cheaper wooden benches traditionally found in parks, schools, and pub gardens, because they last at least 5 times longer than treated wood or tanalised timber (see WRAP study)

In as little as one year wood benches will look jaded, while Kedel's recycled plastic benches will still look like new. There is no significant change in appearance even after many years of use and continual exposure to the elements.

You can expect a Recycled Plastic Bench to last a lifetime and maintain its appearance, without any maintenance other than cleaning.

We use 3 varieties of Recycled Plastic

Recycled mixed plastic - HDPE (High density polyethylene) and LDPE (Low density polyethylene), made from recycled plastic milk bottles and a variety of other waste plastic, Synthetic wood, made entirely from recycled polystyrene, and multicoloured Recycled Plastic Sheet (80% recycled HDPE).

Synthetic Wood or Plastic Wood (Styrene) Benches

Synthetic wood is made from recycled waste polystyrene.

This is the same stuff used to package your meat or fish at the supermarket, and in take away packaging, coffee cups, and packaging of electrical goods.

We take this type of material, which has been melted down and made into pellets, we heat it and mix it with colour pigments, before extruding it through a metal die.

The compression and melting gives us a product with the same density and weight as some South American hard woods.

Recycled Plastic Wood exhibits many of the same working properties as wood.

It has the same look and feel of wood, and can be worked with normal woodworking tools - screwed, glued and sawn just like wood.

Our designers were delighted with the authentic wood-like finish, which can easily be manufactured in any RAL colour.

The colour is added during manufacture, and is the same throughout the material, so it will never need paint. It doesn't flake or crack, is UV resistant, and keeps its colour even in direct sunshine.

Wooden benches have taken quite a battering in our UK winters - they swell up in the wet, and shrink in the dry weather.

Along with frost in winter, this causes warping, cracks, and flaking of paint and varnish.

But a Recycled plastic product won't absorb moisture. It's waterproof! No frost damage is possible.

This is a genuine no maintenance, long lasting product.

If it rains, just wipe it off and sit down immediately. There's no danger of getting a damp, cold backside.

Our customers say Kedel plastic wood looks even more wood-like after weathering, and their friends haven't a clue it isn't wood.

Can you tell the difference between Wood and Plastic?

One of Kedel's customers complained that we had sent them wood instead of a recycled plastic. This was excellant feedback, and we put out a press release about it straight away.

Recycled plastic lumber benches will soon become the norm, saving the worlds hard wood forests, and keeping plastic out of landfill.

About 30% of UK landfill is made up of plastic. We can reduce our carbon footprint significantly by using it instead to provide beautiful, useful, maintenance-free products, with all the advantages of plastic while keeping much of the aesthetics of wood.

Recycled Mixed Plastic Benches

Our mixed plastic benches are made from a mixture of plastics including HDPE and LDPE. This makes them very robust and hard wearing. Maintenance will never be needed as they will never rot.

The recycled plastic lumber we use for these garden benches comes from old paint trays, plastic milk cartons, plastic buckets and most of the recycled plastic waste British families throw away daily.

Bright colours are more difficult to achieve with this Mixed Plastic than is possible with Kedel's Plastic Wood.

This is because this plastic waste contains such a mixture of colours. Although better sorting would help, this is seldom considered cost effective in the UK, as it would have to be done by hand.

80-85% of UK plastic is shipped to Asia, as they have invested heavily in machinery to reprocess it, and have cheap labour to sort and turn this waste into new plastic products and pellet, which are then shipped back to Europe and the UK.

Kedel recycled plastic materials are sourced in the UK wherever possible. We do not use foreign imported plastics from China and other parts of Asia for sound environmental reasons - i.e. they carry a significantly higher carbon footprint due to the burning of fossil fuels for additional transportation.

Kedel recycled plastic benches and picnic tables are the greenest there is, and the more we sell, the more British Recycled Plastic we keep out of landfill and incinerators.

Meeting Government Carbon Targets

So when you buy Garden and Park Benches from Kedel, you are not only acquiring a convenient maintenance free product, but making a direct contribution to reducing the impact human beings have on global warming and climate change.

This eco-friendly, green sourcing of outdoor park and street furniture is a valuable incentive for customers when tendering for or buying for institutional or government projects. It is both ethically relevant and economically advantageous for all parties concerned, and enables governments to meet their recycling and carbon reduction targets.