Tech to Textiles: A Guide to Recycling (Nearly) Everything
Most councils are now pretty good at recycling everyday items (paper, cardboard, glass and even most soft plastics. But it can get very confusing.
- The best two things to do are:
- Live simply, so you have less items and packaging to recycle.
Email or call your council to get a copy of the updated leaflet, so you know exactly what to put in rubbish and recycling bins (and food waste bins if you have them).
To learn how and where to recycle anything by product, just enter your postcode at Recycle Now.
Avoid ‘wishcycling’ (just putting things in bins, and hoping for the best). Machines mostly sort waste, and if you mix up materials, nothing gets recycled.
What most councils collect for recycling
- Paper, cards, cardboard and magazines (not glitter). Remove greasy parts of pizza boxes (you CAN recycle window envelopes).
- Glass (lids can stay on, give a quick rinse).
- Cans and foil (remove lids and pop inside, or pop rings-pulls back over holes and pinch tops closed to avoid wildlife getting trapped). Non-empty aerosols should go to aerosols to hazardous waste.
What other places collect for recycling
- Boots the Chemist has bins for beauty packaging.
- Read how to recycle mobile phones and printer cartridges.
- Bin small amounts of cooking oil in kitchen towel. Or use an oil recycling bin.
- Community Repaint accepts paint from households & businesses.
- Recycle medicines and supplements at pharmacies.
- Recycle spectacles and contact lenses at opticians.
- Stores that sell batteries (including watch batteries) and electronic goods must take items back by law (even if you don’t buy new). Most companies selling mattresses and carpets offer take-back schemes.
Donate clean good condition clothes to charity shops (that don’t test on animals, use smaller ones). Stained and damaged clothes (including synthetic materials) can be deposited at textile banks, where they are recycled into industrial goods (even old knickers and socks!)
For hard-to-recycle items, your office/community/school can order TerraCycle boxes (some are free paid by sponsors, others pool small amounts). Then when full, you can send off for recycling. You can also order a personal Zero Waste Bag holds 7 litres of waste (14 items). When full, just take it to InPost for pre-paid send-off. The categories include:
- Coffee capsules & pods
- Medicine blister packs (recycle medicines at pharmacies)
- Plastic packaging, crisp packets & wrappers
- Beauty, dental and contact lens packaging
- Office supplies and storage media
- PPE (disposable face masks etc – snip strips beforehand)
- Fabrics & clothing
- Food & drink pouches (and pet food packaging)
- Water filters
- Non-electronic toys
Things that you have to bin:
- Dirty nappies and feminine care
- Black bin bags (machines don’t recognise the colour, use eco bin bags)
- Disposable coffee cups & porridge sachets (plastic linings)
- Half-empty cleaning bottles (take to hazardous waste).
- Pump dispensers (trigger sprays can be recycled)
- Plastic sticky tape (use paper packing tape).
- Christmas crackers (due to plastic and glitter)
- Disposable cotton wool & cotton buds
- Old pots and pans & Pyrex dishes
- Batteries, vapes and gas canisters (recycle in shops)
- Animal poop and anything soiled with food, oil or paint
- Mirrors & drinking glasses)
- Old lightbulbs (wrap in thick paper and bin, stores take LED bulbs for recycling)
- COVID-19 tests and PPE (‘snip strips’ of disposable face masks, to avoid tangling wildlife at landfills). Do the same if you see any littered (place in a covered bin).
- Bin old toys, baby mattresses and car seats (these could contain mould and be dangerous if passed on).
Grey areas for recycling (depends on council)
Most councils now accept mixed plastics (not clingfilm usually). If not, save it up and recycle at supermarket bag bins, when next visiting. Reports say that due to mixed materials, some end up burned as biogas, but it’s better than littering our streets.
Most councils have garden waste bins, and some have food waste caddies (items are made into biogas). You can place most foods in here, if you don’t have a compost bin (including acidic ones not to compost, see below):
If you make compost (keep fresh compost away from pets), still bin allium scraps (onion, garlic, shallots, leeks, chives) and tomato/citrus/rhubarb scraps, as acids could harm compost creatures. Same for tea leaves and coffee grounds due to caffeine (use a sink protector to stop clogged sinks).
Terracycle reycling schemes
Making recycling easier at home, school or work is always a good idea. TerraCycle offers a simple way to handle “hard-to-recycle” waste like crisp packets, pens and toothbrushes. These bright, well-marked boxes turn clutter into resources, helping to move more rubbish out of bins and into new products.
Every community needs better recycling options, and TerraCycle can help fill that gap. If you want to get started, here are the steps to bring TerraCycle boxes into your local area.
Get familiar with the types of rubbish TerraCycle collects. They offer different boxes for items like snack wrappers, beauty products, coffee pods and office supplies. Look up their website or request a brochure.
Having a clear sense of which items can go in each box will save time and help you explain the scheme to others. Knowing what goes where makes the process smooth from the start.
Pick Your TerraCycle Boxes
Once you know what your community needs, you can choose which boxes to order. TerraCycle provides single-stream boxes for specific waste and all-in-one boxes for mixed rubbish.
Consider size, too – large boxes suit busy places, while smaller ones work for homes or small shops. Matching box types to real waste streams is key to success.
A few TerraCycle boxes are free (sponsored by industry), the rest do charge (around £100 to £200 depending on sizes). So plan how to cover costs (you may only need a one-off box to get a particular kind of litter out of your town for good).
Some people use school fundraising, local business sponsors or community grants. Passing a collection jar at events or teaming up for a sponsored walk can also work. Many hands make lighter work, and it feels good to support recycling as a group.
TerraCycle Zero Waste Bags
TerraCycle Zero Waste Bag was recently launched, to recycle most things that you can’t recycle from home (27 categories including flexible plastic packaging, fabrics and Styrofoam™).
Just choose a subscription then seal the full bag and scan the QR code (or log into your account) to schedule doorstep pick-up. If many of you do this together, the new items made (like park benches) are donated back to your community!
The free programmes are sponsored by industry, so it won’t cost you anything to order a box for your office or community. You then spend days, weeks or months filling the box up, send it off. Obviously some of these items are best avoided in the first place.
But if you have a big office or government building filled with them (because they are no longer used or you can’t recycle them), now you can! And you can even earn rewards for each valid shipment, to earn stuff for your community or school.
Some people have earned thousands of pounds/dollars for their local area. Shops and other places can also sign up to become public drop-off points, to help quickly fill the boxes for collection:
- Contact lenses & plastic toothbrushes
- Water filter cartridges
- Sweet, crisps & cheese wrappers
- Pringles containers & bread bags
- Hand soap packaging
- Foil balloons
- ‘Flash’ floor wipes & rubber gloves
- Plastic shampoo bottles & toothbrushes
- Disposable plastic razors & make-up pots
- Plastic pens
The paid boxes cost a few hundred pounds/dollars and are intended as one-off community recycling initiatives.
For example, if everyone in a town or village paid a pound or dollar for a box, you can then collectively gather together all the waste for that box, it’s collected and sent off to be recycled, then hopefully you never have to buy one again, as your town will be litter-free! Example boxes are for:
- Office & e-waste
- Plastic cups & straws
- Hair & beauty salon waste
- Alkaline batteries & small car parts
- Aluminium cans, pots & pans
- Art supplies & paintbrushes
- Baby gear & food pouches
- Plastic bath accessories
- Cigarette waste & chewing gum
- Nappy waste
- Garage products & glue waste
- Holiday & party decorations
- Hotel bottles & waste
- Incandescent light bulbs
- Luggage & travel tags
- Pet food packaging
- Safety equipment & PPE
- Plant pots & garden waste
- Shoes & flip-flops
- Sporting goods
- Styrofoam & office waste
- Cassette tapes
What’s the reasoning behind TerraCycle?
It’s not realistic that most of the world is suddenly going to turn into minimalists. So for now at least, there is lots of hard-to-recycle waste to recycle. So they will just clutter up homes, offices and garages – or languish in landfills giving off toxic gases. Or worse, get littered on the streets or thrown in the oceans.
The reason why some boxes are paid-for is because the company does need to pay to get the items recycled, if industry is not sponsoring it. It’s true that Colgate and Bic are probably ‘greenwashing’ themselves to be eco-friendly by sponsoring the free boxes.
But at end of the day, they are sponsoring them. So you can now deposit your plastic toothbrushes and ballpoint pens in boxes without cost to you, instead of them throwing them in the bin.
Co-founder Tom Szaky does seem genuine in his aim to reduce trash and pollution worldwide. The son of medical doctors, he and his family fled to Canada from their Hungarian home after the Chernobyl disaster, and grew up amid a strong conservation and environmentalist movement.
He astounded coming from a poorer background how people around him were just ‘throwing everything away’.
He actively encourages everyone to campaign for tougher laws on waste in their communities.
We need to eliminate the idea of waste. And that’s why recycling (and I say this as as recycling company) is only a temporary solution. Tom Szaky
