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We follow the principles of the 3 'R's
♻ Reduce
♻ Recycle
♻ Reduce
We have carefully chosen to responsibly source products and to collaborate with suppliers who have the same view as us: to maintain sustainable consumption and production.
Our plavalmat® place value mats are made in the UK.
Our plavalmat® place value counters are manufactured in the EU by a company who is working towards the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. These global goals, set up in 2015 by the United Nations General Assembly, were designed to be a “blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all” and intended to be achieved by the year 2030.
They use carbon neutral shipping and aims to be a CO₂ neutral company by 2025. They can also recycle old counters into new ones. They have an eco-garden, have sown two hectares of wildflower meadow and even have their own bee hive.
We continue to look for ways to ways be even more ‘green’ but we still have work to do. We want to use manufacturers and courier companies who use more environmentally friendly means of shipping products to our customers.
We use the following companies to ship our plavalmat products to our customers:
- Royal Mail have already taken steps towards net zero emissions, enabling them to offer the lowest reported emissions per parcel of any major UK delivery company. FIND OUT MORE
- EVRI who working towards being net zero by 2035. FIND OUT MORE
- Amazon co-founded The Climate Pledge which is a commitment to achieve net-zero carbon emissions across their business by 2040.
They are on a path to powering our operations with 100% renewable energy by 2025.
They are deploying 100,000 custom electric delivery vehicles by 2030 and are making 50% of all shipments net-zero carbon by 2030. FIND OUT MORE
We keep our product packaging and labelling to a minimum in order to reduce energy costs and materials.
♻ Re-use
♻ Recycle
♻ Reduce
As our plavalmat® products are made of hard-wearing materials, they can be used time and time again in different year groups and maths topics.
This results in less time, energy and materials being wasted in producing printed/photocopied resources that often only last for a short time.
Our products can be easily cleaned so they can be kept hygienic between uses and look good for longer.
To find out more, please read our care instructions section.
Wherever possible, we re-use packaging and fillers sent to us by suppliers and, if we need to buy new, we purchase sustainable products which consist of mostly recycled material which can be composted or recycled again, rather than going to landfill.
Our plavalmat® place value mats are shipped in sturdy and strong cardboard tubes which can be re-used to keep them stored away.
Our plavalmat® place value counters, base ten and DOTS+TODS™ are kept in plastic boxes in order to ensure they are kept safely for long-term repeated use.
♻ Recycle
♻ Recycle
♻ Recycle
The process of recycling materials still requires time, energy and cost, therefore an item should ideally only be sent for recycling if there is no other way that it can be re-used or repaired.
Many consider recycling to be the least useful of the three ways of reducing the impact on our world, but it is still preferable to sending waste to landfill.
Wherever possible we use eco-friendly recyclable materials for shipping which is sourced from UK manufacturers and suppliers.
Please read below to find out more details about the sustainability of our plavalmat® products.
Our place value counters (and soon Base Ten) are made from recycled plastic from the manufacturing process.
Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR)
Oakfield Learning Ltd is compliant with German EPR law. We are registered with the central agency packaging register and we pay an annual licence fee to contribute towards the costs of processing and recycling our packaging waste.
To be compliant with EPR law in France, Oakfield Learning Ltd sells its products to customers on Amazon.fr and pays eco contributions through Amazon’s pay on behalf service for sales on the French marketplace.
If you would like to arrange a take-back request, please contact us on sales@oakfieldlearning.co.uk
RECYCLING CODES FOR OUR PRODUCTS:
Cardboard Mailer Boxes
Corrugated fibreboard (20 PAP)
Plastic storage boxes
Polypropylene (PP 05)
Place Value Counters/Disks
Polystyrene (PS 06)
Base ten
Polystyrene (PS 06)
DOTS+TODS™
White DOTS - Polystyrene (PS 06)
Black TODS - ABS
plavalmat® Place value mats
Cardboard product and shipping tube, Non-corrugated fibreboard (paperboard)
21 PAP
plavalmat® Place value mats will need to be separated for its compontents to be recycled
Natural Rubber base (recyclable)
Printed polyester surface and polypropylene film
(currently not recyclable)
Why We Use Recycled Plastic
The recycled plastic used in our plavalmat® place value counters comes from manufacturing waste.
Unlike other place value counters that are printed, we consider our embossed designs to be more environmentally friendly as they take less time, materials and energy to manufacture.
An added benefit of being embossed rather than printed plastic is that the design is part of the counter therefore the values are less likely to wear/rub off so they should last for years to come.
We want our resources to help children master maths, but not at the detriment of the environment and we encourage customers to recycle, not put them in landfill:
Currently the counter boxes are made of Polypropylene (PP) Type 5 plastic which is recyclable, but not made from recycle plastic. Please check with your local council that this can go in with your kerbside collection.
The place value counters are made from Polystyrene (PS) Type 6 plastic. There two types of polystyrene: light, insulating and waterproof expanded polystyrene or hard, brittle plastic variety (i.e. our counters). Unfortunately neither are commonly recyclable in normal kerbside collections but many local councils have recycling centres that do accept hard plastics. Where this is not possible, our customers can contact us to arrange the return of the counters and we will send them back to our supplier to be recycled into new ones.
♻ Re-purpose
MADE TO ORDER - ALTERNATIVE MATERIAL TO OUR NATURAL RUBBER PLAVALMAT®
It is possible to custom order a plavalmat® which is made from nitrile rubber instead of natural rubber to give our customers the choice of buying a place value mat with the same great design but with more ‘green‘ credentials. It has more of a carpet like appearance and texture so is different from our standard natural rubber option (which cannot be recycled).
Any excess nitrile that is ‘uncured’ from the manufacture of our nitrile rubber plavalmat® is not thrown away but returned to the rubber manufacturer to be recycled completely.
Once the nitrile rubber has been turned in to a plavalmat®, it becomes ‘cured’ and whilst this unfortunately cannot be recycled, it can be made into granules which can effectively be re-purposed as a material that can be used for playgrounds and equine areas.
We hope that when our nitrile rubber plavalmat® place value mats reach the end of their lives, they are not put in land-fill. If our customers do not have local recycling centres that can accept this waste, they can contact us as we can recycle them on their behalf.
This is not a stock item so is only made to order. Please contact us for more information about prices and minimum order quantities.