Recycling: once and for all!

Want to do your bit by recycling? Confused by all the rules and regulations? You’re not alone

Nearly everything we can use can be recycled, even the root cause of hangovers

Recycling is good. We know this. But still things so often get thrown away that could either be re-used or put in a recycling bin. I often see paper get thrown in the normal rubbish bin when it’s stood right next to the one especially for paper. I’m guilty too – only yesterday I caught myself throwing a milk carton in the bin rather than rinsing it out and putting it with the rest of the plastic which sits in a box less than a metre away. Did I fish it out? Ashamedly no, I was in a rush and just told myself I’d remember next time. So maybe that’s the problem we all have, perhaps we’re all too busy to check long lists of what can or cannot be recycled and try to remember which things go in which bin. Even when they’re different colours and labelled…? Hmm.

The guilt of that milk carton weighing heavy on my shoulders, I decided to solve the problem once and for all. I decided to create the definitive recycling list. What you can and cannot recycle while rushing around (or wasting time) making munchies in the kitchen.

The list

All food can be recycled, be it fruit, veg, meat or just mush – even raw meat. In most places it gets collected separately and is used in council compost, as fertilisers for growing bio-fuel, or to feed hungry prison inmates (joking).

Tea bags are a tricky one. For any gardeners they’re great to put on plants – my dad swears by them – but not so great in compost bins or food waste collection, as the bag itself often contains plastic fibres so won’t degrade very quickly.

Plastic is another weird one. It is very recyclable, but many councils don’t provide a collection service for it because there’s no real plastic market in the UK, so there’s nowhere to send all that’s collected. Randomly though, plastic bottles can be collected and made into fleece jumpers. It’d take two large Coke bottles to make an adult-sized fleece. 

Cans, both steel and aluminium, are all recyclable, whether they’ve housed Fanta or beans. It’s better to give them a quick rinse before you put them in the recycling bin, mainly because of the potential for mould. Cans are a good one to recycle because melting them down for reuse takes less heat and energy than making new metal. Plus, less ore and minerals need to be mined because we can re-use what’s already out.

Paper is one everybody knows about, but just to clarify: it includes any type of paper. Newspapers, magazines, printer paper, letters, cardboard, greetings cards, wrapping paper, bus tickets (but not train tickets with a magnetic strip).

Glass can also be recycled and most councils either collect it through kerbside boxes or from a glass bottle bank somewhere in the community. It’s good to try and keep the colours separate, especially clear glass, and giving it a swill would be nice too. The smell of a few thousand empty beer bottles must be quite powerful.