Dr Margaret Bates, a fellow at the Chartered Institution of Wastes Management, has worked on policy issues for more than two decades. Here she answers some common recycling questions.<\/p>\n
Do I need to wash out my yogurt pots and other food containers?<\/p>\n
“It doesn’t really make a difference to whether it can be recycled or not. What it does do is make a difference to how pleasant or unpleasant it is for the people involved in the collection, transporting and sorting of [the rubbish]. If I can help reduce people working in situations where there might be rats, I will.”<\/p>\n
Can I recycle wrapping paper? <\/p>\n
“Mainly yes, but avoid foil and glitter and remove bows and ribbons. A good way to check if wrapping paper is recyclable is the scrunch test. Hold it in your hand and scrunch it into a ball. If it stays in the ball when you release, it is probably recyclable. If it springs back, then it probably contains foil or plastic and it is not.”<\/p>\n
Can I recycle pizza boxes and chip cartons?<\/p>\n
“Yes, so long as there are no lumps of food on it. If there are, get rid of that and recycle the rest.”<\/p>\n
Are there any recycling no-nos? <\/p>\n
“Do not put things in your recycling because you think they should be recycled, even when your council says not to. ‘Wish-cycling’ does not convince the council to recycle it. ‘Wish-cycling’ causes contamination and costs councils money. If in doubt, check a recycling locator, external<\/a>.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dr Margaret Bates, a fellow at the Chartered Institution of Wastes Management, has worked on policy issues for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":808409,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[1397,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-808408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=808408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808408\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/808409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=808408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=808408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=808408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}