How initiatives like Global Recycling Day can help improve our shopping habits

There’s an awareness event for everything, whether it’s a day, a week or a whole month, from World Pasta Day (25 October) to National Pet Month (April). Of course, many of them are easy to get behind: who doesn’t love a cracking bowl of Italy’s greatest export, or relish in the excuse of sharing (more) dog videos? Some are just bizarre though (National Photo Day… we’re looking at you). While others offer a bit more inspiration than simply getting to eat your favourite food, such as Global Recycling Day, which fell on Thursday of this week.

Worldwide, our throwaway culture is costing us. Almost everything we buy and use is just thrown in the bin. Out of sight, out of mind. In reality, it’s all piling up in landfill.

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Initiatives like Global Recycling Day highlight the need to recycle more of what we use, in order to preserve our planet for future generations. The horrifying stats make the situation all too plain. Less than 10 per cent of all plastic ever made has been recycled, while each person in the UK throws away an average 400kg of waste each year, according to recyclingbins.co.uk.

The pandemic hasn’t helped either. Covid waste, including single use plastic gloves and masks, was already washing up on beaches months ago. While shops being closed for the best part of a year means we’ve all been ordering online, which comes with an insane amount of packaging, which is often non-recyclable.

But the issue is not just the packaging – much of what’s inside is causing big problems: fast fashion, tech that lasts only a few years, toiletries and cleaning products that run out quickly.

There are plenty of big brands encouraging shoppers to recycle in-store (when shops reopen). Boots has recycle points – for all products, not just its own – at a handful of stores, and you earn points after using them. M&S has long had a scheme and John Lewis has partnered with TerraCycle which recycles beauty empties.

Elsewhere, brands such as Mac, & Other Stories, Kiehl’s, Schuh and Apple have recycle and reward schemes. They’re all moves in the right direction, where brands are taking responsibility for the items they produce and sell, instead of it falling solely on the consumer.

While I certainly don’t need a dedicated day to enjoy pasta, I hope initiatives like Global Recycling Day seep into the public consciousness and we use less and reuse more. After all recycling is for life, not just for 24 hours.

Yours,

Emma Henderson

IndyBest Editor