How well do you really know your recycling?
How well do you think you know your recycling labels? While 94% of people in a recent survey told us they felt confident that they dispose of recyclable packaging correctly, we found they are actually making some common mistakes.
To see whether people's perceptions matched up with the reality when it comes to their recycling skills, in July 2022 we asked 1,097 Which? members about their recycling habits, including how they would dispose of certain items, and what they understand particular labels to mean.
The most common errors were:
- 65% of people said they would put compostable items like cups in the mixed recycling.
- 51% put plastic cutlery in the recycling instead of general waste
- 28% said they'd put a toothpaste tube in their recycling bin
The most commonly correct answers were:
- 93% correctly recycle plastic drinks bottles
- 97% put jam jars and glass bottles either in their recycling or take them to recycling points/bring banks
- 88% people make the effort to recycle plastic trays such as fruit punnets and pots like houmous or take them to recycling points
Find out whether you're getting it right below.
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Compostable packaging confusion
If you're at a large event, such as a festival or sports match, where compostable plastics mixed with food waste can all be gathered together in a particular bin and disposed of at large scale, compostable products such as cups, plates and cutlery have a place. Food waste and compostable crockery can be collected together, processed and broken down organically.
But this isn't an option when it comes to your council-run household recycling. Also, what's worse is that compostable packaging added to plastic recycling bins can clog up machinery and break it. The only real household-waste option for compostable packaging is putting it into your general waste bin.
The exception to this is packaging that carries the home compost logo (below left), which is not the same as the seedling logo (below right). It's most likely to be found on compostable caddy liners. Items with this symbol can go into your garden compost or council food-waste collection (as a caddy liner) – but should still never go into your plastic recycling.
But a recent report by UCL, called 'The Big Compost Experiment' found that a large proportion of items labelled with this logo didn't break down in study participants' compost bins.
What should you do with compostable magazine wrappers?
The UCL report included 596 newspaper and magazine wraps as part of the experiment and of these, participants reported that 58% of them did not break down by very much and remained clearly visible. Only 30% were found to have disappeared completely.
The experiment used a variety of different time frames but found that longer time frames didn't hugely affect the results, perhaps indicating that it is the overall environment of an individual's home composter that is more important.
Our magazine wrapper is made of a biowrap (made of potato/corn starch) that is designed to break down in your home composting bin, but if you aren't having success, you could try using it to line your food waste caddy.
Find out more: See whether your preferred tea brand makes its teabags compostable in our guide to whether you can compost your favourite teabags
Plastic cutlery: a problem plastic
In 2019, members of the UK Plastic Pact – a collective group of influential businesses, NGOs and government bodies – identified eight plastic items that needed to be eliminated as far as possible by 2025. One of these was plastic cutlery.
All four nations of the UK have proposed plans to ban the supply of single-use plastic such as cutlery, plates and straws; Scotland's ban came into force earlier this year.
Plastic cutlery is usually made of polystyrene, which is technically recyclable, but it's difficult and expensive to do so. Councils won't collect it as part of your household recycling collection.
Where it's possible to still buy plastic cutlery, you're better off leaving it on the shelf. Choose a reusable option instead, or, if it needs to be disposable, something made with sustainable materials.
Can you recycle toothpaste tubes?
While some manufacturers have designed fully recyclable toothpaste tubes, most are made of complex composite plastics, with layers of plastic and aluminium together. Composites are tricky to break down into their original materials for recycling, so they can't be added to your kerbside collection.
The same problem applies to other metallic-looking plastics – items like cat food or baby-food pouches, for example. However, some supermarkets now have front-of-store collections for plastic bags, wrapping and flexible plastic and will take these composites for recycling, too.
Chemical recycling uses relatively new technology, whereby chemicals break plastic down into an oil that can be used as though it's brand-new plastic. This could also provide an alternative way to deal with complex plastics that also contain aluminium, but the technology isn't available at scale yet.
Find out more about plastics recycling in our guide to how to recycle in the UK.
The label to look for
Which? has been calling for mandatory labelling, telling you what to do with packaging, since 2018. It is finally on its way, but won't begin before 2027. As well as being on all packaging, it needs to be clear and easy to understand.
As things stand, labelling is still confusing. Nearly half (48%) of the people we surveyed thought the green dot symbol (a circle made up of two arrows looped together) denotes something can be recycled. In fact, that's not the case. This logo, which appears on all sorts of packaging, actually means the manufacturer has complied with packaging waste legislation – it has nothing to do with the item's recyclability.
And 32% of people thought the compostable seedling logo meant packaging was recyclable when it is just telling you it can be broken down by industrial composters.
The best label to look for is the On-Pack Recycling Label (OPRL; examples below). This collection of labels is becoming increasingly used on packaging in the UK. They're some of the clearest available in terms of letting people know what they can do with the item in question.
For packaging to carry the OPRL green 'recycle' label, 75% or more of UK local authorities must collect and effectively recycle it. That means if you know your local authority has particularly strict recycling conditions they may not take it, but the majority will.
If the packaging is labelled 'don’t recycle', it means fewer than 50% of local authorities collect it. It's still worth familiarising yourself with exactly what is and isn't accepted for your area. You can enter your postcode into the Recycle Now website to see what your council allows.
In 2020, we analysed 89 of the UK's bestselling branded groceries and found little more than a third had packaging that was fully recyclable in household collections. And almost four in 10 items had no labelling to show whether or not they could be recycled. We have called for recycling labelling to urgently be made clearer and mandatory across all packaging items.
A revisit to this list of products in 2022 showed that recycling information has significantly improved in nearly all categories we looked at.
OPRL told us that the vast majority (~95%) of the 100 biggest brands are now signed up to its scheme – that's why these labels are becoming so much more familiar for UK shoppers. You'll also find them on the majority of supermarket own-brand products.
Some plastic wrapping is now labelled with a logo that tells consumers not to recycle at home but to ‘recycle with bags at large supermarkets’. Other soft plastic bags and wraps may not carry the label yet, but are still likely to be recyclable at supermarket collection points, so it's worth checking to see whether your local supermarket has a collection.
Eventually these labels will be updated more widely – we found in the course of our research that there is often a time lag while packaging catches up with changes to labelling rules.
Crisp packets may still carry the TerraCycle logo but this scheme has now closed. Take crisp packets to your nearest supermarket front of store soft/composite plastic collections instead.