Global Recycling Day: 18th March 2023!

Learn all about global recycling day and pick up some useful recycling tips along the way.

Global Recycling Day: 18^th March 2023!

Hello and welcome to the latest Enva universities blog post. Our topic this time focus’ on the Global recycling day. This is an initiative that was first established in 2018 by the global recycling foundation. The foundations aim is to draw attention to recycling all around the world and highlighting the importance of correct waste disposal. You can check out their website here.

As those of you who are familiar with our blogs know, Enva aim to recycle is much of our waste as possible, using our state-of-the-art waste sorting facility in Colwick Nottingham. However, due to the way certain products are made, not everything can go through the recycling process. With that in mind, in this blog our goal is to highlight those products that are frequently disposed of incorrectly and to highlight the process’ they should go through instead.

Batteries

As with a lot of items, there are many misconceptions when it comes to discarding batteries. The first note to address is that batteries are recyclable, however not by traditional means. Batteries should never be put in standard general waste or recycling bins. Batteries can only be recycled via singular battery collection points. This is for two main reasons, the environmental impact, and the damage they can cause to waste management facilities.

It is also important to remember that your routes to recycling batteries are different depending on what type of battery you have.  Lithium-Ion batteries are rechargeable and can be found in things like drills and E-cigarettes. Nickel Cadmium batteries are single use disposable batteries that you would use in a torch or the T.V remote. Both must be recycled via separate collection points. These can often be found in your local supermarket or hardware store.

Composite Materials

Composite materials, simply put, are products where more than material has been bound together. As you can imagine, for a recycling facility aiming to separate items by material, these products can be problematic and are more frequently occurring in day-to-day life than you might think. Sandwich packaging, coffee cups, and juice cartons are all paper board products that would be recyclable if not for their plastic lining. While further examples can be found with a foil or metallic lining such as crisp packets and chocolate bar wrappers.

Despite not being traditionally recyclable with Enva, when disposed of correctly at your university these items go through an energy recovery process which is more sustainable than landfills. However, some of these items can be recycled if collected separately and disposed in a singular waste stream.

An example of this would be crisp packets which you may have noticed can be collected on their own at many supermarkets. You can check for segregated recycling collect points on the recycle now website, here. Then by entering the material e.g (Crisp Packets) and your postcode to give you a list of drop off points close to you.

Food

As some councils in the U.K don’t offer a segregated food waste collection, its quite common for people up and down the country in the U.K to dispose of their food waste in the general waste. However, with Enva the universities can offer segregated food waste collections. This is a far more sustainable option for food waste disposal and is in a sense food recycling as the food waste in this process can be turned into fertilisers and soil amendments. If you’d like to learn more about the process your food waste goes through with Enva you can check out our recent food waste prevent blog, here.

Unfortunately, when food waste is disposed via recycling or general waste, it is contaminant and lowers the value of other materials within those waste streams. It is also likely that while going through those process’ the food waste breaks down into fragments too small to go through our energy recovery process.

This could mean that it is removed from the process with other materials such as sand and soil and placed into a landfill. So, the most sustainable option is always to make use of your food bins on campus.

Food Packaging

Finally, the packaging for food is a material that can often be disposed incorrectly. This is because unlike other materials it comes with certain caveats based on the material it used to contain. For instance, is the packaging clan and dry? Packaging such as pizza boxes while being cardboard, a recyclable material. Are not eligible for recycling due to the grease on the container.

This would be the same for other single use food containers despite their material. Both cardboard and plastic containers need to be free from food contamination before they can be placed in the recycling bins. So we always advise where possible giving them a quick rinse before disposal.