Visitors to a reclaimed beach spot in Essex have been enjoying the view on outdoor furniture made by an award-winning company using entirely recycled plastic.
Tourists admiring the sea views at Canvey Bay in Essex have been benefiting from around 100 benches and picnic tables made by award-winning TDP, which has marked the Plastic Free July campaign by reporting a big increase in demand from organisations looking to replace old and rotting wooden furniture with its own environmentally friendly alternatives.
TDP, a business which makes a wide range of outdoor furniture from 100% British recycled plastic, is seeing increasing numbers of customers wanting its products because their existing benches and picnic tables are becoming too decayed to use.
The company has provided furniture to many organisations including Canvey Bay Watch in Essex, a voluntary group which has furnished the reclaimed island with nearly 100 benches and picnic tables so that members of the public can enjoy the area for many years. Canvey Bay Watch’s work is so valued it was named a finalist in the green category of the BBC Radio Essex Make a Difference Awards.
TDP has supplied Canvey Bay Watch with many benches – the vast majority of which are in memory of loved ones – along with picnic tables.
The company, which won a rare and coveted Kings Award for Enterprise for Sustainability in 2023, is being approached from organisations across the UK, including community groups, councils and sports clubs, who are replacing old wooden furniture with long-lasting recycled plastic alternatives which need no maintenance, will not rot or splinter, are comfortable to sit on, look smart, and last for many years with no ill effects.
Cllr Barry Campagna, from Canvey Bay Watch, said: “With this amount of benches, we don’t want to be painting and varnishing them. The benches are brilliant – they look like new, still. That’s the reason we went for TDP. Other wooden benches in the area are not looking good now, whereas our TDP ones still look great. If someone does sit down on them and gets mud on them, for example, a quick wipe and they are perfect again.
“We think they are a good quality product. TDP offers excellent service. Their products are delivered right to our door. They’re very hard-wearing. With the saltwater atmosphere, we haven’t had to do anything to them.”
Now family company TDP, based in Wirksworth, Derbyshire, is being kept busy by providing the products made in its own factory which – due to the fact they are made from plastic – are extremely hard-wearing and have strong environmental credentials too.
A picnic table from TDP contains the equivalent of 12,726 plastic bottles, saving 2.89 cubic metres of plastic from going into landfill, waterways and oceans. One of its ‘Dale’ benches uses 36,985 plastic bottle tops, saving the same amount of CO2 from entering the atmosphere as would be emitted from a 975 mile car journey – more than the distance from Penzance to John O’Groats.
The Plastic Free July campaign has inspired more than 100 million participants in 190 countries by providing resources and ideas to help people reduce single-use plastic waste at home.
Rob Barlow, owner of TDP, along with wife Anne has taken his passion for sustainability out of the workplace and into his own life by taking part in some highly valued citizen science trips in some of the most far-flung parts of the world, such as Antarctica, the Arctic Circle, and remote parts of the Indian Ocean.
He has seen first-hand the enormous problem of plastic in the oceans and how climate change is affecting the environment.
He said: “Plastic Free July is a great awareness-raising exercise tackling the huge problem of plastic waste in the world. I have seen myself how big an issue it is – when container ships tip out plastic into remote oceans it’s a heartbreaking to see.
“We founded TDP in order to try and address this problem by making something hard-wearing and practical from recycled plastic. We’re very proud of our range of benches, picnic tables and nature products such as bird tables, hedgehog houses and garden planters, that are helping to solve the plastic problem by using it to make something new.
“It’s an ideal solution because the problem of plastic is that it takes hundreds of years to break down in the environment. But that very problem makes it the ideal material for use in our products for the same reasons!
“We’re seeing more and more organisations around the country saying to us that they are buying our products because the wooden benches and tables they have got are now rotting and giving people splinters. They need to be regularly treated too – which is not a requirement for our products.”
TDP has so far saved nearly three billion plastic bottles from littering landfill, oceans and waterways through all the products it has made over the years.
For more, see www.tdp.co.uk.
