Recycling is just as important as ever

Ordinarily, most of us would be at work right now. We would be looking forward to our weekend plans or day dreaming about our upcoming Easter holidays. We wouldn’t be cancelling plans to visit our parents or worrying about running out of toilet paper. But as working from home becomes the new norm, everything is starting to seem out of the ordinary.

It’s important that on Global Recycling Day today, we remember to keep a sense of normalcy. Recycling is still just as important as ever. Here’s why:

1. Every year, we extract billions of tonnes of resources from the Earth, resources that are finite. Some of those resources are used for months, years, or centuries before being replaced or recycled. But for those resources that are manufactured into single-use items (think coffee cups and straws), they often get disposed of within minutes after purchase. What a waste. It’s important to keep cycling these items back into our economy, easing the burden of having to extract more of the Earth’s precious resources.
   
   
2. It’s important to keep voting for the future of our planet. Every purchase you make, whether that’s stocking up on non-recyclable home comforts or consciously choosing brands that offer a recycling solution, is a vote for the future you want to live in. For those of you with capsule espresso makers thinking of stock piling pods while you work from home, consider choosing a brand that takes sustainability seriously. While you’re at it, why not check out the recycling programs TerraCycle offers for this kind of waste stream and see how easy it is to dispose of them responsibly.
   
   
3. Recycling what we can is going to help ease the burden on our increasingly strained landfill operations. While various government and healthcare departments try their best to contain the spread of the virus, there’s going to be a lot more hazardous and unrecyclable items manufactured in the process. Medical waste including anything that is sharp, infectious, or pathogenic can’t be recycled because it’s too dangerous to be sorted at facilities where people risk infection. It’s therefore important that we keep recycling what we can.

At times of chaos and confusion, it might be easier to revert back to bad habits, to stock pile disposable products and to rethink our environmental priorities. We should still remember that the planet needs us, and that now, more than ever, we need the planet.

If you’re feeling inspired and want to learn more about ways to up your recycling game at home, check out our free recycling programs for common household products.