Most of us know the benefits of recycling and make an attempt. But are we doing it right?
Last week Planet Ark released research that showed that overall Australians are on the right track, but there is room for improvement. It just comes down to how we do it.
Eight out of 10 councils report plastic bags as their biggest recycling problem. This is when people put their recycling in a plastic bag before putting it in the recycling bin, or include soft plastic (any type of plastic that can be scrunched into a ball).
Single use shopping bags are the most obvious types of soft plastic but the average household is filled with lots of other examples including bread, rice, lolly, cereal and frozen food bags, biscuit packet wrappers and old green garbage bags.
The good news is these plastics can be recycled for free at many supermarkets through REDcycle. Since the program was launched in 2012, it has diverted more than 150 million pieces of plastic from landfill.
Here a few more lesser known facts:
- Did you know that aerosol cans are recyclable? Just under half of 50-65 year olds know this and only 30 per cent of 14-24 year olds.
- And there is another outdated belief that you can’t put pizza boxes in recycling. In fact you can, as long as they are not heavily soiled by food scraps.
- More than half of us wrongly believe that old drinking glasses can be recycled. As drink ware is made from heat-tempered glass, it actually prevents the recycling of bottles and jars. Put them in the red bin.
- It is estimated that there are 25.5 million unwanted mobile phones in Australia. Recycling these unwanted mobile phones and accessories offers significant environmental benefits. For example, more than 95 per cent of the materials used in mobile phones and accessories can be recovered and used to make everything from stainless steel to plastic pallets. Recycling 50,000 handsets can remove the need to mine over 330 tonnes of precious ore. MobileMuster is the only government-accredited phone recycling service in Australia and has around 8,000 recycling locations (including retailers and Australia Post outlets).
