We mentioned it briefly on Fleshbot yesterday, but you really should watch the video of LoveHoney‘s Rabbit Recycling Program in action — it’s here and embedded after the jump. Piles (a huge bin, “the first ton“) of pink Rabbit Habit vibes, crushed, ground up! Maybe it’s my love of industrial machinery, but watching the whole sex toy recycling process is really cool.
This is the result of LoveHoney’s strategy to encourage green wanking (oh yes, it’s the greening of self-abuse). They began their Rabbit Amnesty program a while back, asking people not to toss their chemical-laden Rabbit vibes into landfill, but instead to send them the vibes for recycling. The customer takes “the pledge”: sends the vibe, gets another one at half price, a Pound (Sterling) is donated to a green cause, and LoveHoney deals with green/maximum recycling disposal of the toy. Snip:
More than 1,000 electrical waste centres have been set up at recycling sites around the UK. But who wants the hassle and embarrassment of taking a dog-eared defunct sex toy down to the council tip? Not many people, we hazard, which is why we set up the Rabbit Amnesty sex toy recycling scheme.
(…) The first stage is to run the products through the Querstromzerspaner – it’s called “the QZ” for short, because the German for “chain mill” is too much of a mouthful for SWEEEP operatives.
This behemoth of a machine works like a hurricane to spin everything together and smash it apart. It creates an enclosed tornado in which metals and aluminium cut softer materials such as plastics so no other cutting tools are required.
This is a very efficient way of breaking down the WEEE because it requires minimum pre-dismantling, has low operating costs and ensures the highest quality output materials.
The effect is to disassemble everything to its constituent parts: metals, plastics, rubber and batteries.
Next, these materials are sorted using magnets – anything that contains iron is filtered out automatically – and then by hand. Desirable material and hazardous elements are picked out by hand to be recycled appropriately.
At first when I read about the program I was like, ew, used sex toys. Then I saw the video and I’m all for the whole enterprise. (Insert, your, um, “green piece” jokes here.)
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