As Recycle Week celebrates its 20th anniversary, multi-award-winning UK manufacturer and No. 1 eco-cleaning company, Delphis Eco has published some key findings from its latest survey.
The findings capture some of the focus of this year’s theme, ‘missed capture’, the items that can be recycled but are commonly missed in the home. One of these key missed items for recycling are cosmetics, where nearly 40% of people said they don’t think to recycle bottles or may occasionally do.
Food waste is another ‘missed capture’. It’s estimated that 70% of wasted food in the UK is wasted by families in their own homes. This is 4.5m tonnes of food being thrown away every year that could have been eaten. The Delphis survey also found that nearly half the population don’t have a home compost bin.
Another key aspect of this year’s Recycle Week theme is a focus on local authorities to share the central message – to galvanise the public into recycling more of the right things, more often. However, with different systems in play across regional authorities, 73% of responders said they strongly agree that all local authorities should be consistent in their recycling approach to make recycling more efficient and less confusing as a national standard.
When asked how confident people are that their local authority is correctly sorting their household recycling rather than sending it to landfill, nearly half of those asked were not confident that recycled waste was being processed effectively.
Delphis Eco Founder and Managing Director, Mark Jankovich, said: “WRAP’s Recycle Week is always a great opportunity to focus on how we can reduce, reuse and recycle more.
“From our survey findings it’s clear that we still have a way to go. Key items not being recycled such as cosmetics and toiletries alongside food waste is a key area for improvement across homes and local authorities. We can – and should – do more and Recycle Week is a good time for us all to stop and think about what we can do more off when it comes to recycling.”
