The truth about recycling

December 16, 2021

Recycling is one of those things that can be overwhelming and truth be told, alot of households aren't doing it right :/

You may be surprised to learn, but majority of Australian recycling was shipped offshore to China up until January 2018 when China slammed their waste borders shut to the world. Majority of western countries, including Australia were sending their waste offshore because it was cheaper to recycle offshore than in their own country due factory, technology and labour costs.

When China refused to continue to take the world's waste, a problem came to light. We are producing more trash than we can recycle and what do we do with it all? While recycling is great and helps avoid trash going from landfill, the ultimate goal needs to be zero waste and reducing the amount of trash we use.

So let's get into the nitty gritty of recycling.....

Research shows that 47% of Aussie's put soft plastics like plastic bags into their recycling bin and that 26% of Aussie's don't rinse their plastic containers before disposing them into the recycling bin. You might be thinking 'is it really that big of a deal if I put my left over pizza box with crust and topping or my un-rinsed milk carton in the recycling bin'? The answer is yes. It can take just ONE non-recyclable item to contaminate a whole truck load of recyclable items which sends that truck load of recyclables to landfill!

We thought we would put together a simple, straight forward guide on what you can and can't recycle at home to help spread the word!

Items that you can recycle:
1. Paper and cardboard products, newspaper (remove the soft plastic wrapping first and from boxes you must remove the plastic sticky tape)
2. Plastic containers and food containers (must be rinsed, remove foil from yoghurt containers)
3. Plastic bottles
4. Aluminium products such as cans, aerosols, foil. With foil large or small e.g from yoghurt wrappers or chocolate make sure you scrunch the foil into a ball so the machines can detect it as small little scraps of foil get lost and then won't get recycled.

Items to not recycle:
1. Plastic bags. You can drop your plastic bags off to RedCycle collection point
2. Batteries
3. Clothing or cloth material
4. Food containers with food in them or that are unrinsed
5. Paper towels (even though it's 'paper', they are manufactured in a way that stops them from being recycled. They are made with resins, softeners and bleach.
6. Toothbrushes & Toothpaste tubes as they are made of multiple materials to bind them together
7. Coffee cups

Bin System

At our Luxey HQ we stepped up our waste game and implemented a 5 part bin system to help reduce our environmental footprint and make sure that everything we use ends up in the right place.

Recyclables: Plastic bottles, containers, milk cartons
Soft plastics: Plastics that are scrunchable like plastic bags, wrappers , cling wrap can be taken to your nearest RedCycle collection point (Woolworths and Coles) to be specially repurposed!
Compost: We compost in our warehouse backyard with our Subpods! Having a worm farm is seriously the best thing ever, this is where you can put alot of your fruit and veggie waste, soiled cardboard, paper towels that haven't been contaminated with cleaning chemicals etc

Cardboard: We have a giant recycling bin for our warehouse boxes
Landfill: All the things that sadly can't go anywhere else

There are so many options we can do to reduce our waste. You can use reusable shopping bags, using reusable straws, using a reusable coffee cup and using reusable containers for snacks and food, using a reusable water bottle instead of purchasing single use plastic bottles, refilling shampoo and conditioner bottles at bulk food shops, using beeswax wraps, the list goes on!

Feeling confident in your recycling abilities now? Take this fun yet educational recycling quiz here and test your knowledge!

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