Protecting our planet

Glamorgan Star news 26/09/2022

2 minutes read

Looking at the unintentional contamination of recycling with Brian Mayne. Images: Adobe.

Protecting our planet:

By Brian Mayne –

The perils and pitfalls of ‘wish-cycling’

This column by local environmentalist Brian Mayne is included as part of the recent Recycling Week (19-25 September) and looks at the unintentional contamination of recycling.

Recycle Week is designed as a celebration of recycling across the nation. It’s the one week of the year where all sectors of the waste industry come together to achieve one goal: to help us recycle more of the right things, more often. This year’s theme is ‘Let’s Get Real’ and a challenge it aims to tackle is to reduce the contamination of our recycling. Doing this could help Wales move from being number three in the world for recycling to number one.

One issue that we need to address is to make sure we get information to ensure that our enthusiasm doesn’t get the better of us and we end up unintentionally putting materials out for recycling that cannot be recycled. Recycling experts have even given this phenomenon the name “wish-cycling”, it was created to describe the practice of people putting items in the recycling bin that they think or hope can be recycled – without knowing for certain. Our intentions may be good, but our recycling actions may not be.

The pizza box made of cardboard (covered in grease), is a good example. Having enjoyed our takeaway, we’re left with the box. We look at the cardboard recycling bag and we’re pondering whether or not the pizza box is recyclable. Then, out of genuine hope, we put it in the recycling bag because it’s cardboard and a little bit of grease won’t hurt, right?

Wrong, this is because food is one of the worst contaminants in the paper recycling process. It not only affects how fibres bind together during processing but it can also contaminate whole recycling loads.

So, acting on those good intentions can do a lot of harm, and can prevent lots of materials from being recycled which leads to more waste. In the worst case, it’s the equivalent of throwing a green shirt into a load of white laundry. When tainted or hard-to-recycle items enter the material stream at a processing facility, they may contaminate the other recyclables, rendering the entire load useless. Pizza boxes that are not stained with grease and/or oil of course can be recycled, or if the lid is clean, you can tear that part of the box off and recycle it. Some people put the contaminated boxes in their home compost bins.

There are lots of ways we can check what can and cannot be recycled, the Vale and Bridgend Councils give a comprehensive list of materials they collect on their websites. Wales Recycles also provide a service whereby we can share the items we struggle with, and they’ll endeavour to get an answer to our questions. Contact them @WalesRecycles on Twitter and Instagram or via Facebook here.

So as part of recycling week let’s all take advantage of getting answers to our recycling dilemmas so we can recycle better and make Wales the best recycling nation in the world.

Brian is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, as well as the Chartered Institution of Wastes Management, Chartered Environmentalist, and is recognised by the International Solid Waste Association as an International Waste Manager.

The views expressed by columnists of this newspaper do not necessarily reflect the views of the Glamorgan Star, its employees or its proprietors

🌟 This article first appeared in the printed edition of the Glamorgan Star on 22.09.22 – read it in print first!