Recycle Week 2017

When it comes to recycling, it’s not always easy to see the bigger picture. We’re all guilty of chucking a couple of bits and pieces into the orange bin then promptly forgetting all about them. Because you never really see where they end up, right?

Actually, that’s not strictly true, because the ‘end result’ of recycling is everywhere you look. The last plastic Coke bottle you drank from could well have been recycled from a rival Pepsi bottle in a former life. Ditto the plastic bag it came in, which was probably recycled from another plastic bag before it.

In fact, even the top you were wearing when you bought the plastic bottle and put it in the plastic bag probably contains plastic fibres – or microfibers – which were made from yet more plastic bottles or bags. And that synthetic top can of course be recycled all over again… Do you see where we’re going with this?

Recycle Week 2017: What Goes Around Comes Around

The way recycled items come back into circulation is the theme of Recycle Week 2017, which runs from the 25^th September to the 1^st October. ‘Recycling – It’s Worth It’ is the overarching message this year, with the strapline ‘what goes around comes around’ to support that idea and show why recycling is worth our time.

If you’ve never heard of it, Recycle Week is basically an annual campaign encouraging all of us to think more about how we recycle. Last year’s Recycle Week was all about the everyday items around the home that many of us forget to recycle. That includes things like bleach and shampoo bottles, fruit punnets and yoghurt pots – all of which end up going into landfill unnecessarily.

And this year’s theme takes the idea a step further, showing how those common items end up coming full-circle, and why recycling actually benefits us in the long-run. 2017 will be Recycle Week’s 14^th year, and the hope is that it’ll be bigger and better than the ones before it.