Nine out of ten UK households now recycling

September 23, 2020

93% of UK households believe everyone has a responsibility to help towards cleaning up the environment. Only 4% of people questioned said that they 'rarely' or 'never' recycle. Wrap UK, the government's advisory body on waste management found that recyclable waste collections increased in weight by around 25% early in the lockdown.

Among the recyclable items that still find their way into the general waste, drinks cans, bathroom plastics and yogurt pots are among the most common. But about 82% of households mistakenly put items that can't be recycled like toothpaste tubes and plastic film into the recycling.

Meanwhile, a new report from consumer organisation Which? has found that only 34% of top-selling grocery brands had packaging that was fully recyclable and 41% did not use any labelling to show whether the packaging could be recycled or not.

The Pringles tube was identified as 'notoriously hard to recycle', but Babybel cheese's plastic netting bags were also highlighted as a problem, because not only can they not be recycled, but they can get tangled up in recycling machinery if they get put in the recycling by accident. Fizzy drinks were the report's most recyclable category, with all using 100% recyclable packaging.

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