Recycling Around the World

The current UK recycling rate is hovering around 45%. While this is not bad, we could do better. However, even the avid recyclers among you will admit that you sometimes struggle to work out what can be recycled. It turns out that you can recycle more than you think, and some of the items might surprise you. Here are 10 things you didn’t know you could recycle.

When it comes to sustainable living, some cities just lead the way. Adelaide in Australia is no exception. One of Australia’s greenest cities, it's home to 50% of South Australia’s native plant species as well as 75% of the native birds.   Because of its natural resources, Adelaide is in an area designated as a Natural Resource Management Region. Here’s how it’s become one of the world’s greenest cities.

George at ASDA has launched a clothes recycling scheme that will give customers rewards for bringing back their unwanted clothes. In partnership with Yellow Octopus Group which helps businesses become more sustainable. ASDA Northern Ireland has a scheme where customers receive a 10% off voucher which they can use online at George. Customers just have to locate a participating store then they can get a label or QR code so they can drop off their old and unwanted items. 

Discarded laughing gas canisters are becoming an increasingly familiar sight on our pavements and in our parks. These small steel bottles contain nitrous oxide or ‘laughing gas’ which has become a recreational drug of choice for party and festival-goers.

Nitrous oxide is a light anaesthetic in dentistry or to charge whipped cream aerosols. As a drug, the gas it provides is transferred from the canister into a balloon and inhaled. The high that users get is brief, so you’ll often find a large number of discarded canisters in the same place.

With more of us working from home, or just wanting to enjoy a luxurious cup of coffee whenever we fancy one, the popularity of coffee pods has surged. It’s great for the coffee companies and a treat for us, but maybe not so good for the environment, as a YouGov poll of over 4,000 coffee pod drinkers found that 35% of them didn’t know that coffee pods were recyclable. 

As being one of the most picturesque cities in central Europe, Ljubljana is one of the world's greenest cities and it even won the European Green Capital in 2016

You’re probably used to seeing depressing headlines about recycling, but what about the good things that are being done all around the world to make recycling a way of life...

Just when you thought that surely litter couldn’t get everywhere, ten tonnes of it has been collected from Mount Everest!

The final stop in our Recycling Around the World Series, Zimbabwe.  Zimbabwe has always had a problem with litter, rubbish is just left by the side of the road and frequently thrown from cars, mainly because they have a lack of an effective waste management and a lack of understanding on the residents part.  

Yemen is a fairly new state, created in the 1990's it has always had trouble with conflict and instability.  Yemen has a unique challenge is waste management with only a few contractors that can recycle waste and the inherent problems with the transportation of waste over long distances with the desert environment.