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The Top Five Items We're Forgetting To Recycle

In the UK we currently recycle 33% of our household waste, which is almost double the amount recycled five years ago. And the amount of household waste recycled or composted in England alone has tripled from 57kg to 157kg per person.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that we’re going to have to recycle even more if we really want to tackle climate change. And new research for National Recycling Week this week indicates that we’re better at recycling from some parts of the home than from others.

For example nearly two thirds of us recycle household items from the kitchen but barely a third of us remember to recycle from the bathroom or from the bedroom.

Here’s the Top Five Items that most of us are forgetting to recycle.

• aerosol containers for deodorant, air freshener or polish, etc (62%)
• biscuit and sweet tins (53%)
• plastic shampoo and toiletry bottles (32%)
• plastic bottles of cleaning products, eg bleach, cleaner or disinfectants (31%)
• glass jars, such as those for cooking sauces (20%)

In fact more than one in four people don’t even realise that aerosols, plastic detergent bottles, magazines and biscuit and sweet tins can also often be recycled.

The official amount of household waste recycled in England last year was 7,976,000 tonnes – out of a total of 25,775,000 tonnes of household waste. If that sounds a bit meaningless, here’s a better statistic from WRAP, the people behind National Recycling Week: if each of us could recycle ‘one more thing’ it would save nearly 850,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent – the same as taking over a quarter of a million cars off the road each year, or saving the amount of energy as that used by 23,865 households for a year.

So check out the bedroom and bathroom … and take a few cars off the road.

More from National Recycling Week here

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