Protect the planet this Recycle Week: 3 easy ways to recycle more

It’s Recycle Week, so what better time to focus on ways to waste less and recycle more.

To celebrate Recycle Week which started on 14 October, we’ve come up with our top 3 simple solutions to help you recycle more.

It’s estimated that UK households waste 1 billion items each year that could be recycled. Think you’re doing enough? Why not have a look at our top tips and see if you could be doing more.

1. Don’t be a ‘wishcycler’

Just because you hope something can be recycled, doesn’t mean it can. Throwing the wrong things into your recycling bin with the best intentions is known as ‘wishcycling’. But if you’re putting inappropriate items into your recycling, you could be doing more harm than good. When too much of the wrong material is collected in one lorry load, the whole lot can’t be recycled and goes to waste.

Common things you can’t usually recycle at home are:

• Takeaway coffee cups
• Soft plastics like bags, crisp packets and fruit/veg packaging
• COVID-19 test waste
• Glass cookware/ovenware and drinking glasses
• Sticky tape
• Tissues, wet wipes, cotton buds and cotton wool
• Toothpaste tubes
• Pots and pans

Each area of the UK varies, so if you’re not sure if something can be recycled at home, use this recycling locator to check specific items. Make sure you understand what your local council can and cannot recycle from your household bins and keep a list of items on your fridge for easy reference. Remember that things like batteries, coffee cups, soft plastics, glassware and pots and pans can often be collected at specific recycling points.

2. Reduce contamination

Pizza boxes covered in grease or jars and cans with lots of food residue are contaminated items. Again, if too many items in a lorry-load of recycling are badly contaminated, the whole batch gets thrown away. Collecting and sorting contaminated recycling is costly to the taxpayer and reduces the value of recyclable materials.

You don’t need to remove every label or put things through a dishwasher, but if you can do the following it’ll help:

• Rinse items such as glass jars and plastic bottle
• Tear off the greasy sections when recycling pizza boxes
• Check if your council collects the lids on plastic and glass bottles and jars. If they do, put the lids back on before you recycle them
• Remove bubble wrap and polystyrene from cardboard boxes before recycling.

Often, the temptation to chuck a jar or tub of something yucky straight into your landfill bin can be strong. Be brave and scoop out any food waste before rinsing the item and adding it to your recycling. Give yourself a pat on the back and remember that by recycling rather than adding to landfill, you’re making a positive difference to the world around you. If you’re on a roll and interested in doing more by reducing food waste, take a look at our blog on 10 simple ways to reduce food waste.

3. Don’t forget the bathroom

Most of us have a place to store recyclable items in our kitchen, but what about your bathroom? In fact, some of the most frequently wasted recyclable items can be found in the bathroom.

Here are some common bathroom items that you can recycle:

• Shampoo and conditioner bottles
• Shower gel and bubble bath bottle
• Toothpaste and soap boxes
• Toilet roll tubes
• Bathroom cleaner/bleach bottles and sprays
• Deodorants and aerosols
• Shaving foam
• Hand soap bottle (without the pump dispenser)
• Moisturiser or lotion bottles
• Aftershave or perfume bottles 
• Inhalers 

To help you remember to recycle these items, it can be useful to create a space for recycling in your bathroom, whether it’s a bag on the back of the door, a cupboard space or drawer or a second bin under the sink.

Recycling effectively is a simple yet powerful way to conserve resources and protect the planet. 

By diverting waste from landfills, we can reduce pollution, save energy, and create materials for new products. Challenge yourself to implement at least one of these top tips into your household routine, and encourage those you live with to get on board with recycling just a little bit more.

If you’re interested in developing your Green Skills, our Green Skills Academy offers a range of courses targeting emerging Green Occupations such as Sustainability Consultants or Waste and Recycling Management. Take a look at our Greens Skills Academy courses and apply today!

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