This week is #NationalRecyclingWeek and I don't know about you, but I find recycling very confusing. Anyone who has been to a workshop with me knows that for me, recycling is one of my last resorts. If I can refill, or reuse something I will do that first. Or if I can buy something 'nude' then I will. And of course, my compost is where my food scraps end up. For most people, recycling includes 4 things. Metal, glass, paper/cardboard, some hard plastics. I do recycling a bit differently. I reuse all of my glass. Mostly glass can break while being recycled and can contaminate the recycling. Some councils accept it, others don't. Some have a special recycling section that is separate and just for glass. Paper and cardboard I always recycle, but I get very frustrated with the wax covered or plastic-y papers that are ambiguous, so I try and stop them coming in the mail, and put them in landfill when I get them. All of the cans go to recycling. I avoid buying hard plastics as much as possible because if they end up in the ocean, the plastic kills animals.
Other things that I recycle include the containers for change. I take cork, tooth paste tubes and toothbrushes, cosmetic packaging, used pens and markers and old stockings to Biome for their terra-cycle bins. I take batteries to Aldi. I take e-waste to Harvey Norman. I take soft plastics to Woolworths and Coles.
But I must admit. All of this collection from my own items and my friends and families items, is sometimes very time consuming. What if we had a very sophisticated recycling system in our homes? What if there were 10 compartments in 1 bin instead of just 1? Would that help to solve our issues? It is an idea I've always wondered.