20 years of recycling progress

As we flocked to cinemas to see Love Actually and said farewell to Concorde, before Facebook was even a thing, two decades of recycling progress got underway with the passing of the Household Waste Recycling Act 2003. This meant local authorities in England provided every household with a separate collection of at least two types of recyclable materials by 2010. And we were off…

September 2004 rolled round and Recycle Now was born. The following month, Alistair MacGowan launched the first ever Recycle Week: the ‘Big Recycle’. WRAP, the climate NGO that brings you Recycle Now, conducted their first recycling survey, which revealed that 45% of respondents said they recycle everything they can, or at least ‘a lot’ of what can be recycled – plenty of room for improvement! So, we launched the Recycling Locator – a tool to show people where their nearest recycling points are – in a bid to get people recycling more at home and in their local area.

Aiming to reduce the prevalence of pesky packaging, new regulations obliged businesses to reduce excess packaging and help increase recycling. Replacing earlier regulations, this put the burden of recovery and recycling on the producers of it – which seems only fair!

WRAP’s recycling survey found that 60% of respondents now claimed to recycle everything that they could or at least ‘a lot’ of what could be recycled – a decent increase on the 45% two years before, but still a way to go. Meanwhile, we decided to get schools involved, launching our ‘Recycler the Rapping Robot’ campaign and working with local councils to implement effective recycling schemes in schools.

Thanks to work by WRAP, the loop was closed for plastic milk bottles as they were successfully recycled back into milk bottles for the first time. No more crying over spilt milk!

Historically, wine produced overseas had been shipped to the UK’s tables pre-bottled. Now, the hard work of WRAP meant it began being shipped in bulk and bottled in the UK in lightweight recyclable bottles, reducing carbon emissions while ensuring your Chardonnay remained at the top of its game.

Helping to reduce the impact of all that Easter egg packaging, chocolate manufacturers clubbed together under WRAP’s direction to pledge a reduction in their packaging. The target: 25% less plastic packaging, smaller boxes, eggs just as delicious.

Wales takes centre stage, becoming the third most successful recycling nation on Earth. Iechyd da!

The UK Plastics Pact launched in 2018 following revelations from the BBC’s Blue Planet programme. This led supermarkets and big brands to pledge to eliminate plastic waste from their shelves, improve recycling of their products and move towards a more sustainable and measured use of plastics. More on that in our piece on recycling plastics.

It’s not easy being green – so Sprite bottles made the switch to clear plastic to make the recycling process even easier, helping ensure the plastic used can be turned into another bottle. Other brands and retailers followed suit, moving away from coloured plastic to clear.

Meanwhile, Tesco introduced the first recycled plastic packaging to their cheese aisles, made from materials returned by customers. The same year, WRAP published a list of eight single-use problem plastics to be eliminated – including plastic-stemmed cotton buds and plastic drink stirrers – most of which have now been banished. Next up are five more items, including the plastic wrapping on fresh fruit and veg.

2019 also saw us partner with the Scouts & Beavers and Girlguiding to encourage more young people to foster great recycling habits.

Black plastic is hard to recycle because it’s difficult for the recycling machines to identify it. Following WRAP’s research and industry best practice guidelines, we banished non-recyclable black plastic food packaging to the dustbin of history. Spotted some black plastic? As of 2020, you’ll find that in most cases, it can now be recycled thanks to a special pigment that makes it detectable by scanners in the recycling process. Result!

On the subject of plastic, 2020 saw supermarkets start collecting plastic bags and wrapping from special front-of-store bins. This includes crisp packets, cereal liners and frozen food bags (find your nearest collection point). Not only that, but beer producers including Budweiser and Stella stopped using non-recyclable plastic ring packaging for cans of beer. Cheers!

In 2021 Muller joined major supermarkets in moving from coloured caps on plastic milk bottles to clear, meaning both the bottle and the lid can be recycled back into high-quality material, such as another milk bottle. Also on the plastic front, Tesco announced they’d removed 1.7 billion pieces of plastic from their stores, including plastic wrap on tins and additional lids on items like cream, yogurt pots and wipes. Co-op removed additional plastic lids from dairy products such as cream and crème fraiche, and Aldi removed the outer shrink wrap from its four packs of beans.

Meanwhile, in Parliament, a groundbreaking piece of legislation was passed. The Environment Act tightened up obligations for packaging producers and set out requirements for Councils to collect our food waste for recycling every week. It also clarified what materials should be collected in our recycling – exciting improvements that will be with us in due course.

In September, we launched the Action Pack Recycling Challenge competition for schools.

In 2022 Recycle Week went international to support our partners in Chile, while Coca-Cola introduced drink bottles with attached lids to ensure they’re recycled along with the bottle and not littered. All local authorities in England now regularly collect some form of household recycling and pick up a wide range of materials, with 88% offering the five most common materials: paper, card, glass, cans and plastic bottles. And the uptake was fantastic – WRAP’s 2022 Recycling Tracker showed that 9 in 10 UK residents recycle either most or everything they can.

As Recycle Week turns 20, it will once again be engaging schools, this time with its Big Recycling Hunt Campaign. Recent statistics suggest that recycling rates have gone from 14.5% to 44.1%, according to UK Statistics on Waste from GOV.UK.

The recycling system isn’t perfect – yet! – but we’ve come a long way since 2003. Changes in the system will continue as the industry adapts to new technologies and regulations come into force. But crucially, with many more people aware of the importance of recycling and their part in the country’s progress, the future looks far greener than it did twenty years ago.

With further changes on the horizon, thanks to the Environment Act 2021, such as a law establishing the ability to require a deposit return schemes for drinks bottles, and shifting of the responsibility of funding for recycling onto manufacturers, the revolution looks set to continue. Happy recycling!