As a BC resident, you’re part of North America’s best group of recyclers. (Good job!) And although that’s absolutely something to be proud of, there’s always room for improvement.
Perhaps you’re an avid recycling enthusiast, maybe your landlord helps you with recycling, or perhaps you’ve never known whether you’ve been recycling correctly or not. When you’re ill-informed about how to recycle particular materials, it’s easy to make mistakes.
But now’s the time to make a positive change to include only accepted materials each time you recycle items at home or at work. To help you get there, here’s a look at five common recycling mistakes and how you can avoid them.
Whether you’ve purchased sushi to only eat half of it, or decide to bin the rest of an eggplant lasagne that you had for dinner last night, it’s a common mistake to throw half-full food containers in your recycling bin.
Simply emptying the food contents into your compost bin and rinsing the container makes a massive difference. By doing this, you’ll ensure that food or other products don’t spill all over the other materials in your recycling bin. Besides, you’re not going to want to have to clean up the mess at a later stage.
Let’s say you’re walking out of your place after you’ve enjoyed some Thai food you had delivered, and you put the plastic bag and foam packing in your home recycling bin. This can cause huge problems in the recycling system. Plastic bags, foam packaging, overwrap, and items such as zip-lock pouches, or crinkly wrappers, get mixed with other recyclables which makes it difficult to meet recycling standards on local and international levels.
To avoid this, you can easily collect all such items in a box and return them to your nearest recycling depot where they will be effectively managed for recycling.