Derbyshire beauty spot Carsington Water chooses environmentally friendly recycled plastic benches for visitors
By Jill Dando News
Visitors to Derbyshire beauty spot Carsington Water have this year been enjoying admiring the view from new environmentally friendly picnic tables made a few miles down the road.
As from 2024 the much-loved reservoir is home to benches and picnic tables made entirely from recycled plastic by award-winning Derbyshire company TDP at its manufacturing base in Wirksworth.
The company has been seeing increasing demand from organisations, businesses and individuals around the UK who are turning to recycled plastic for their outdoor furniture, after finding their wooden benches and tables are now rotting and becoming harder to maintain each year.
Leaders at Severn Trent, which operates Carsington Water, have chosen to install picnic tables and benches made by TDP for a more environmentally friendly and long-lasting solution.
Their total order from TDP has saved more than 100,000 plastic bottles from entering waterways and oceans.
TDP has now used the equivalent of nearly three billion plastic bottles in their products, helping tackle the huge problem of plastic in the world’s oceans.
John Matkin, visitor site manager at Carsington Water, said: “We decided to work with TDP as we wanted to support a local, independent business, which is having a real positive environmental impact, helping with our aspirations to be an environmentally responsible company while also providing our visitors with high-quality outdoor furniture.
“Since first working with TDP, they have supplied Carsington Water with picnic benches, trail benches, memorial benches and accessible picnic benches, all of which are made in the UK, with plastics sourced here as well. The use of recycled plastics means we spend less time maintaining the benches, using that time elsewhere to improve visitor experience.”
TDP won a rare and coveted Kings Award for Enterprise for Sustainability in 2023, in recognition of its deep commitment to the environment through both its products and business practices.
A picnic table from TDP contains the equivalent of 12,726 plastic bottles, saving 2.89 cubic metres of plastic from going into landfill 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.
Other local organisations which have turned to TDP’s recycled plastic benches as an alternative to wooden furniture include Hazelwood Bowls Club in Derbyshire.
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: “We are delighted that our benches and picnic tables are now in use by visitors to Carsington Water. It’s a beautiful Derbyshire reservoir that my family and I have enjoyed visiting for many years. We used to take our children there and now our grandson Freddie enjoys visiting Carsington with us too.
“We founded TDP in order to try and address the world’s plastic problem by making something hard-wearing and practical from this long-lasting material. 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.”
