Have you ever put a half-eaten sandwich in the recycling bin, hoping you have done the right thing and not created waste? Waste experts have coined a phrase to describe people putting unrecyclable goods in the recycling bin in the hope it will be recycled. It is known as ‘wish cycling’.

We use such as variety of products and packaging each day that it is confusing which bin to put them in. Surveys of the British public show up to 80% of UK households do not recycle things that could be recycled and 55% are ‘very unclear’ about what can and can’t be recycled. Consequently, it is assumed that only 50% of items that could be recycled are not being recycled, contributing to lower rates of recycling. The problem with ‘wish-cycling’ makes things worse. It mixes up unrecycled and recycled goods together. Unrecycled goods can contaminate recycled goods, and prevent them from being recycled. Here are some simple guidelines of what can and cannot be put in recycling bins.

Five things you can put in the recycling bin

1. Cardboard: cardboard, such Amazon packages, can be put in the recycling bin. The only caveat to this is that if the cardboard has been contaminated, it cannot be recycled (see below).
2. Glass: anything made from glass can be recycled. Some councils will accept broken glass and others will not, so check out your local council’s policy.
3. Paper products: anything made from paper, provided it is not mixed with plastic, can be recycled. But products like paper plates and paper cups cannot be recycled if they have been significantly contaminated (see below).
4. Plastic bottles: plastic bottles such as cleaning products, plastic cartons of drink and shampoo and conditioner bottles can go in the recycling bin. But what is very important is that they are empty otherwise the leftover liquid can cause contamination in the recycling bin. Also do not crush plastic bottles out of shape. This makes it harder to sort out bottles in the recycling centre. 
5. Metal: metal such as aluminium cans and foil can be recycled. Again, it is best not to crush them for the same reason.

Five things you cannot put in the recycling bin

1. Left-over food: food waste should not go in the recycling bin with paper, cardboard, plastic and glass. It can contaminate these rest of the products, which means they cannot be recycled. Instead, food waste should go separately in the composting bin or the general waste bin.
2. Packaging that has been contaminated: For example, takeaway pizza boxes are usually made from cardboard but if a lot of grease from the pizza has contaminated the box, it can’t be recycled. If there is very little grease on the pizza box, you can put it in the recycling bin. This is also true of paper plates and paper cups used at events. Significant food contamination on these products means they cannot be recycled.
3. Black plastic: black plastic cannot be recycled because sorting systems in recycling plants cannot identify them since they use light to identify different plastics.
4. Crisp packets, chocolate and sweet wrappers: The foil they are made of are not ready for recycling. If some of the packaging is made of paper, it can be separated from the rest of the packaging and recycled.
5. Anything smaller than a tennis ball: things that are very small are difficult to process at recycling plants. This is why when recycling bottles, you should keep the lids on because they cannot be recycled separately.  

Things NOT to put in your home recycling bin:

Batteries

Toothpaste tubes

Dirty nappies

Plastic toys

Plastic cartons

Flexible plastic

Kitchen roll, toilet roll and tissue if it is not made out of material that can be recycled

Wet wipes

Containers that have been contaminated by grease from food, such as takeaway pizza boxes which have absorbed grease.

When choosing to decide which bin to throw something in, only throw an item in the recycling bin when you are clear it should go in there and it is not contaminated. There are usually pictures on the recycling bin of what can be recycled. If you are unclear whether to put something in the recycling bin, put it in general waste. You are not helping the environment by putting as much as you can in the recycling bin.