What can be recycled ?

Benefit your business.

Highlight the benefits of recycling at work to your colleagues and bosses:


It’s easy to set-up and run

It saves space and can reduce clutter

It’s cost effective and can save your company money

It reduces waste going to landfill, saves energy and helps tackle climate change

People like to be able to recycle at work as they can at home
 
Find a local recycling provider.
 
Find a recycling service provider in your local area and get a list of companies with services to suit your needs.
 
Setting up a recycling scheme.
 
To ensure everyone is aware of the recycling scheme, you may want to consider:


Hosting a recycling day or event to launch the new recycling scheme to employees. For example, hold a desk recycling amnesty to encourage staff to recycle as much as they can from their desks.

Train staff to recognise and understand the different materials that can and cannot be included in your recycling collection.

Put a list or poster above your recycling containers identifying what can be recycled to make sure the correct items are recycled.

Position recycling containers in a convenient place, so it’s as easy to recycle as it is to throw things away.

For resources to promote your recycling scheme, visit http://www.recyclenowpartners.org.uk/

What else can you do ?

Save paper by only printing what you really need to and print double sided so less paper is wasted. Re-use scrap paper for notes.


Help charities by recycling at work. Search the internet - old mobile phones, computer equipment, stamps and printer cartridges can all be recycled to raise funds for charity.

If your company wants to take further environmental measures, visit the Carbon Trust website .

What happens to our recycling ?

Recyclable items are predominantly collected from your home in two ways.

There are kerbside ‘sort’ schemes where recyclables are sorted into their respective materials on the lorry at the kerbside; and co-mingled collections where all your recyclables are put into one compartment on the lorry before being taken to a Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) and sorted.


At the MRF, all the mixed recycling is sorted and separated into different types of materials by hand or machine (or both) before being sent to manufacturers who make it into new products.

Once collected and sorted, recycled materials become valuable commodities in the worldwide market.

There are many recycling plants here, reprocessing million of tonnes of material every year. For example:

all of the newsprint manufactured here in the UK is now made from 100% recycled paper;

all of the organic (garden and kitchen) waste we collect is recycled here, usually quite close to where it is collected; and

over 80% of the glass collected for recycling is used in the UK, the majority of it to make new glass bottles and jars.

There is an ever increasing range of high quality products that are made in the UK from recycled materials. To find out what your recyclables are being made into click on the respective materials fact files page.

Countries such as China are prepared to pay high prices for recyclables such as waste plastic; mainly because they do not have readily available sources of virgin materials (no indigenous forests or oil supplies) and they have a large manufacturing industry that requires these products.

Even though exporting our recyclables means a bigger recycling loop because recyclable materials are transported further, it is still a better environmental option than using virgin, raw materials because:

it minimises the need to use our natural resources such as oil

using recycled materials significantly reduces energy use and carbon emissions during the manufacturing process;

the transport impacts are reduced because the materials are transported in container ships returning to China after bringing the goods to the UK; and

it means those materials are not being landfilled.

Facts and FiguresInformation collected for Defra by the Environment Agency on packaging waste shows how much material is exported and how much is recycled in the UK:

Material Reprocessed in the UK Reprocessed Abroad

Paper 49% 51%

Glass 81% 19%

Aluminium 66% 34%

Plastic 33% 67%

Wood 100% 0%

The CPI figures, which include newsprint, indicate a balance of about 47% domestic reprocessing and 53% export.




 
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