We have recently signed up to Yes Recycling’s National Hard Hat Recycling Scheme which ensures all hard hats are fully recycled.

Across the country millions of hard hats are thrown away at the end of their life cycle. However, because of the way recycling systems work, they ordinarily find themselves in general plastic waste. The chances of them being recycled into new plastic from there is minimal. The National Hard Hat Recycling scheme diverts the hard hats to a dedicated waste processing facility where they are recycled.

The hard hats go through a process of being fully destroyed by being shred into 10mm flakes. They are then separated from their constituent polymer elements, washed, dried, melted down and filtered. The pure molten polymer is then made back into new polymer pellets, which is the raw material for all plastic manufacturing.

Although very robust, hard hats need to be replaced after three years or whenever their performance becomes compromised. Our membership allows our site teams to dispose of their unusable hard hats knowing they are guaranteed to be recycled.

More information on the scheme can be found here.

We are delighted to sign up to the National Hard Hat Recycling Scheme. Disposing of hard hats this way to a dedicated hard hat recycling facility ensures the waste plastic is fully recovered. This supports our recycling targets and our responsible business practices.

Richard Grafton, Head of Policy & Compliance