The Facts About Recycling

Facts About Recycling

• 88% of UK households consider recycling an established norm. 9% admit to only recycling occasionally, and 3% say they do not recycle at all.
• 52% of us recycle more than we did a year ago.
• 18-34s are more likely to recycle than any other age group.
• Households with younger children aged 0-12 recycle more than those with older children.
• 55% of British households place items that could be recycled, such as foil, aerosols, and plastic detergent bottles, into their general rubbish bins. 
• 85% of us contaminate our recycling bins with items such as drinking glasses, toothpaste tubes, and plastic film lids.
• On average, we dispose of 6.1 items incorrectly when sorting our household waste, putting non-recyclables in our recycling bins and recyclables in our rubbish bins.
• While three-quarters of us admit to checking recycling information on product packaging, research shows that up to 76% of us misunderstand what recycling labels mean.

These facts might make you think twice about what you throw away:

• Recycling a single aluminium can will save enough energy to power a TV for up to three hours or an iPod for up to twenty hours.
• Recycling everything you could in your kitchen recycling bins could power a TV for six months, plenty of time to watch GOT!
• Recycling a single glass bottle will save enough energy to power a laptop for half an hour.
• Recycling a single plastic bottle will save enough energy to power a lightbulb for three hours or more.
• Recycling five plastic bottles creates enough insulating fibre to fill a ski jacket.
• It takes 70% less energy to recycle paper than it does to make it new from raw materials.
• It is believed that 50% of all food waste is still edible, and could be ‘recycled’ through food banks, charities, and making animal feed.
• It takes a hundred buckets of water to create just one loaf of bread and six buckets of water to grow one potato.
• 50% of the food waste we throw in the bin could be composted.
• As much as 80% of the things we throw away could be recycled.
• Even cars can be recycled, with up to 80% of the vehicle being reused.
• More than 15% of the money we spend on products pays for packaging – most of which ends up in the dustbin.
• It is estimated that we throw away over 600m batteries in the UK each year.
• Only 27% of batteries are recycled in the UK, resulting in more than 20,000 tonnes of battery waste straight to the landfill.
• It takes fifty times more energy to make a battery than the finished product produces.
• In the UK, we disposal of around 80 million fluorescent tubes each year. If we were to recycle those tubes, we could reuse up to 4 tonnes of mercury – a natural resource.
• Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) is the fastest growing waste stream in the UK.
• According to the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), 25% of our WEEE waste could be repaired and re-used.
• Most of the two million TV sets discarded each year end up in UK landfill sites, despite being accepted at many recycling centres across the country.

Source: https://www.recyclingbins.co.uk/blog/uk-recycling-statistics-2021/ -  https://www.recyclingbins.co.uk/recycling-facts/