Heads up - LABC Warranty joins hard hat recycling scheme

Used hard hats and the National Hard Hat Recycling Scheme

From now on, “spent” hard hats used by LABC Warranty staff will be sent to a dedicated recycling facility.

There, they’ll be broken down and the plastic will be recovered and turned into pellets. The pellets are then used in domestic manufacturing, ensuring the hats are recycled entirely within the UK.

“This is a great scheme and we’re pleased to be involved,” said Liam Devaney, Managing Director of LABC Warranty.

“We’ll now be able to collect all our end-of-life hard hats and send them away for recycling, a far better alternative to letting them up in a landfill.”

Formerly, LABC Warranty’s risk surveyor and inspection staff were issued with a new hard hat when theirs passed its expiry date, and it was left up to staff to dispose of their own hard hats.
While many would recycle them at home, or hand them off to children and schools for play, many would simply be thrown away.

While LABC Warranty staff are still welcome to gift their spent hats to family that want to use them for play, any hard hats that come back to us will go to the recycling scheme and be re-used.

The humble history of the hard hat

The first hard hats were made for war. Leather hats embedded with ivory tusks were found in Greece and date back to the 17th century BC.

In the early 1900s, dockers took a simple hat, covered them in tar and allowed them to dry, creating a shield (of sorts) from items falling off ships.

American Edward Bullard invented the first incarnation of the modern-day hard hat after seeing the effectiveness of helmets during WW1. It was called the hard-boiled hat.

The first major construction project requiring the wearing of hard hats was the Hoover Dam in 1931, followed by the Golden Gate Bridge in 1933.

The first shock-proof hard hat, designed to withstand up to 10,000 volts, was created in 1952.
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