Recycling plastic is a hot topic especially with the quite horrific and frightening images on TV and social media of the damage that plastic is causing on land and in the oceans with massive impact on marine life, for example turtles dying by being tangled up in plastic bags, animals eating plastic and so on. Which? , the Consumer Association, has written an informative article on different kinds of plastic and recycling plastics with helpful tips on which plastics are recyclable and recycling plastic must know information.
Something I wasn’t aware of regarding recycling plastic bottle lids is that they are too small for the recycling plastic machines to pick up and get missed therefore it is best to put them back onto bottles after rinsing them out. So now I’ll be putting caps back on bottles.
Also, the issue of plastic straws not being recycled has been in the headlines and Which? suggests putting these inside larger cartons, if you still use plastic straws, so that they are not missed by recycling plant machines.
The author also recommends that when recycling plastic bottles, you should squash them before you put them out for recycling as this stops them rolling off the sorting machine conveyor belts - the fact that they can roll off the belt is something that I would never have considered before reading this article.
Also make sure that you empty and give containers a quick rinse before recycling because any residual food waste left in your recycling, for instance, a half-full yoghurt pot or baked bean tin, risk contaminating porous materials such as paper and card in the same recycling load and rendering it all unrecyclable.
These are all lifestyle decisions and I think it’s important that we all do what we can to help the environment and our planet that abundantly sustains us.
