REVIEW Recently I received a package from . It came in a plastic bubble mailer. Inside the mailer, the product was inside another smaller bubble mailer. Inside that, the product was in a plastic bag. Inside that, the product was in another plastic bag. Knowing what we know about microplastics, I didn’t feel great about this purchase, even though the packaging was out of my control.
I don’t know how you feel about your city’s recycling program, but I don’t think very much actually gets recycled. Even if I believed the stuff wasn’t going to the landfill, my city doesn’t take soft plastics. In fact, I read that it gums up their machines and it is a big problem when people chuck plastic bags into the recycling bin. So what to do? The Clear Drop soft plastic compactor (SPC) offers an alternative to sending all of those mailers, bubble wraps and other packaging into the dump by compacting the plastic and making sure it’s really recycled.
⬇︎ Jump to summary (pros/cons)
Price: $1400 paid in installments ($200 down and $50/month for 24 months with recycling included)
Where to buy: Cleardrop
What is it?
A trash compactor that also melds the plastic into a block to send to their recycling service.
What’s included?
- The compactor
- One user manual and quick start guide
- Some postage paid mailers
Tech specs
| Dimensions | 15.75″ x 27.56″ x 11.93″ (W x H x D) |
| Weight | 61 lbs |
| Capacity | 6.33 gal |
| Platform Pressure | 247 lbs |
| Forming time | About 30 min |
| Cooling time | About 3 hrs |
| Average power consumption for one block per month | About 3.3 kWh |
| Voltage | 120 VAC, 50/60Hz |
| Block dimensions | 12.4″ x up to 5.9″ x 8.27″ (W x H x D) |
| Block Weight | Up to 3.3 lbs |
Design and features
The Clear Drop Compactor arrived on my doorstep with a rather loud thunk. It’s a heavy parcel, but it came packed really well. I went ahead and unboxed it right on my porch and brought it in mostly by dragging it. It is all one unit, so there’s no way to break it up for hauling, and if you live in a building with stairs, I hope you have some help.
The instructions were fairly simple. First you plug it in, and then there’s a feeder in the lid that sucks the plastic using two rollers. To activate the plastic feeder, you hold the lock button down until it says, “add plastic.” If it gets stuck, which mine did occasionally (usually because of air inside what I was feeding), you can hit the reverse button until your piece is ready to be fed again.
The machine takes all kinds of soft plastics, but if you need to verify if your plastic can be compacted, the manual outlines the different kinds it can take. Essentially, if it’s soft like a baggie or bubble wrap, it can probably go in. The manual says that to not “gum up” the Clear Drop you should only send clean plastic through. It could also attract bugs if it’s not clean plastic. So while plastic wrap can go in the recycler, you should wash it if it has food on it. I never sent anything dirty through the Clear Drop. I tossed my plastic wrap in the garbage if it was dirty because I also live in Southern California and there’s a water issue here. We often have to pick an environmental crisis to respond to.
The Clear Drop Compactor says it will hold a month’s worth of soft plastic (about three pounds), although this machine arrived during the holidays, so I had a million bags to send through. Between the bubble mailers and the fact that everything arrives in multiple baggies, I was feeding that compactor more than once a day. The screen on the top is supposed to tell you how full the compactor is getting, but I think they might need to work on that because it basically goes from 99% empty to completely full with basically no reading in between. I had it filled up in a couple of weeks.
One word of caution if you get this gadget: the pinching warning is real! Mor than once I felt my fingertips get mildly squeezed and had to pull my hand away before I had an injury. There are two rollers that pull the plastic in. Don’t get your hand in there!
Once full, the Clear Drop Soft Plastic Compactor will ask when you would like to compact the bin. It offers a time delay so you can schedule it when you’re not home, and I think this is a nice feature because apparently there can be a smell involved with the compaction. The manual says it can smell like a laminating machine. I set the timer and was out when it did its thing. I smelled nothing out of the ordinary when I arrived home. The screen tells you to open the lid after compaction, and you can remove a melted block of plastic.
Once you have the block, you are supposed to put it in a Clear Drop mailer, which is made of of soft plastic. The mailers are postage paid so you just drop it in the mail and Clear Drop takes it from there. The compactor comes with two bags ready for mailing and mailers are included for the first two years while you’re paying off the recycler. After two years your recycler is paid off and mailers aren’t included anymore, so they’ll sell you three more mailers on their website for $45.
Because I live in the city, there are paid services that will pick up your recycling that the city doesn’t take. Those services run around $30 a month, and although they take extra things like batteries, I usually take those things to the hazardous waste center along with my e waste. So $45 for three months of soft plastic recycling seems reasonable (after you pay off the compactor). I think it’s also great for people who live in more rural areas that don’t have an alternative to throwing their soft plastics in the trash.
Final thoughts
Living with the Clear Drop compactor for a month really made me realize how much I threw away that is soft plastic. I really was surprised. Between the regular recycling of paper and hard plastic and the Clear Drop compactor, the amount of regular garbage that I generated was quite low. It certainly brought home how most of what I consume can really be recycled. I felt less like I was killing the planet, and it’s hard to put a price on that!
What I like about the Clear Drop Soft Plastic Compactor
- Makes me feel less guilty about my purchases
- Works great!
- Is hassle free because the mailers have the postage already
What needs to be improved?
- The capacity indicator needs work
Price: $1400 paid in installments ($200 down and $50/month for 24 months with recycling included)
Where to buy: Clear Drop
Source: The sample of this product was provided for free by Clear Drop. Clear Drop did not have a final say on the review and did not preview the review before it was published.
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