A WEEKS WORTH OF RECYCLING

Words and photos by Nina Large |

Recycling plays an important role in keeping our planet healthy and clean. However, sometimes people can forget to recycle or can accidentally put recycling in a normal rubbish bin. This week I decided to keep all the recyclable materials I used, to find out how many of the materials I throw away can be recycled.

DAY 1

As it happens, I didn’t have much rubbish at all on the first day. I had a busy day and so didn’t find much time to buy or cook anything meaning I had hardly any rubbish. I re-used my water bottle throughout the day rather than having to buy a new bottle, this saved me having to recycle more single use plastic bottles than I had to. I found that all the rubbish I had was recyclable – I did not buy or use anything that could not be recycled. 

DAY 2

I was surprised at how little rubbish I also collected on the second day. I used up what little contents was left from a plastic and glass bottle. I ate out at a restaurant on the second day and so I did not collect much rubbish throughout the day at all. Although I did use the plastic yokes, used to hold cans together, I found it on the floor whilst I was out and decided to pick it up and put it in my bag to throw out when I found a recycling bin and so I added it to my collection of recyclable rubbish. 

DAY 3

Again, I found that on the third day I still wasn’t using many recyclable materials – perhaps because I found myself busy and didn’t have much time to stop and eat or drink. The third day made me question my diet more than my plastic consumption. 

DAY 4

I found that I collected a lot of rubbish on day 4, however, I was not able to bring all of it home to photograph. On day 4 I went out drinking and went through several plastic cups in a nightclub (of which I was unable to take out of the nightclub). I would say I went through about 8 plastic cups. I was offered a plastic straw with every new drink I bought but decided to re-use the same straw all night to reduce the amount of plastic waste. I found that as my week continued, I bought, or used more recyclable rubbish when I was out, rather than in the house. 

DAY 5

By day 5 I was surprised to find that it had taken so many days to use up recyclable material from household items (toilet roll packaging). I did not expect most of my rubbish to come from food and drink. During the day I had some friends around for drinks and found that I went through 4 straws when having drinks in the house due to putting them down and forgetting where I left them. After realising how unnecessary it was to use four straws while drinking in my house, I will be more aware of this in the future. 

DAY 6

On day 6 I noticed that most of my rubbish was from food, which is unlike any of the previous days. I think because I only cook for one it takes me a while to make my way through packages of food and so I have less rubbish to throw out than a family household would.

DAY 7

By day 7 I expected to see little recycling material make its way into my rubbish. It was the only time this week I had cooked food in the house properly and so I had recyclable material from food packaging. I found that the food packaging also had non-recyclable plastic in which I hadn’t noticed before; making me aware that not all packaging is as recyclable as I thought so. 

END OF THE WEEK THOUGHTS

After collecting my recycling for a week, I surprised myself. I thought I would have had much more to recycle. I found that a lot of the rubbish I go through are non-recyclable packages. Previously to this I expected most packaging to be recyclable and never really checked to see if they were. This has made me realise I need to check packaging more to make sure I am disposing of an item properly.  

I would urge everyone to double check their rubbish to make sure they are recycling the right things. To save the environment it is worth re-using plastic items such as bottles and straws to reduce waste on our planet.