AIBU to give up on extra hard recycling and to think Terracycle is shit?

[MaggieFS]

I think it's really important to recycle as much as possible and the sheer volume of stuff which goes to landfill is awful, but it's so bloody hard. I've just been to our garage to try and make a space for a delivery, and can't move for all of the bags and boxes of recycling we have, in addition to the wheelie bin the councils collects for glass, paper, tins and plastic

• a bag of soft plastic (wraps and bags etc) which have to be taken to a large supermarket. We get deliveries and rarely go. I now have three bags piled up
• a bag of tetra pack cartons which have to go to a specific collection bin
• a bag of Carex soap refills which Terracyle were taking but don't seem to anymore
• a bag of pumps from trigger sprays, moisturiser and so on. Ditto terracyle
• a bag of Ariel laundry pod packets and Fairy dishwasher tablet packets which I can apparently recycle if I go to a very specific Sainsbury’s with that terracycle bin
• rag fabric to go to the clothing bank
• tablet blister packs which Superdrug may or may not have space for the next time I go for their terracyle bin
• bag of crisp packets and a bag of biscuit packets which I can take to yet another place with those specific terracyle bins

Honestly, I am so very tempted just to put everything terracyle into the bin. It's so fucking complicated. I work FT and I don't have time to schlep to all these places.

Does anyone else bother?

Crikey that seems like a lot. We just have one bin for all cans and plastics. Soft plastics/ hard plastics including tetra packs

It is, and I fully appreciate it's been my doing, because I think it's bad if things which can be recycled aren't recycled. But so much can't go into the council bin, I've ended up in this state and it's too much. I presume most people just chuck them in refuse?

recycle if you can. I take my soft plastics each time I go to the supermarket so they don’t pile up - cause they take up so much space
rags clearly labelled and put in clothing bin
i can recycle cartons in my own council collected bin
hard plastics I take to the recycling centre twice a year

It would be good if you could just take Teracycle stuff to the local HWRC. At least then it would be just one trip out say once a month. Our waste stream is mad - black bags for rubbish, a food bucket, separate bags for hard plastic and paper, sepate boxes for glass and metal and a wheelie bin for garden waste.

You should be able to give your soft plastic bags etc to your shopping delivery driver for recycling.

I think there's someone else on terracycle taking soap pumps at the moment (although that may have finished!)
we put crisp packets and dishwasher tablet bags and stuff in with the soft plastics recycling as our tesco changed to take that as well, check if yours has changed and you might be able to merge some of the bags at least?

I think I'll give it one more go at recycling what we've got and then just stop the stuff which is inconsistent.

And I forgot to mention toothbrushes and paste. But the place which took those (at least the same terracyle place as crisps and biscuits) had stopped taking paste last time I went and it was just brushes. It's ridiculous.

It doesn't really matter to be honest. The UK sends 3 and a half Olympic swimming pools worth of recyclable plastic abroad to countries China or Turkey every day. Then half of it is burned or dumped somewhere.

So you wasting time sorting different plastics to go here and there is a drop in the ocean of a much bigger problem. By all means continue your recycling efforts but don't stress yourself out like this because at the end of the day it's all on a boat sent away to be burned anyway.

All this info is on greenpeace website too.

Councils need to make it easier if they actually want people to recycle. And stop sending recycling to foreign landfills as that just makes people not bother at all.

I recycle everything that is collected via doorstep collections - glass, paper, card, hard plastics, card, rags. Big things get taken to the area recycling centre. I'm afraid I don't recycle things like blister packs as I would have no idea where to take them. These could be made part of doorstep collections if councils wanted to.

It drives me mad, too. I spend so much time and effort on recycling ... and then, as the pp says above, a lot of that effort goes to, er-hem, waste.

I know it's only a tiny thing but I use toothpaste tablets now instead of paste. They tend to come in little glass jars so I can recycle them easily in the normal recycling. It might be difficult to persuade a family to switch over though. It's worth looking at some products to see if you can change to a product that comes in a package that's easily recyclable. But it's not always an option.
I try to recycle where I can but it's definitely not easy sometimes.

YANBU at all. Terracycle is greenwashing - they allow companies to market their products as sustainable and recyclable when in reality, they aren't. There's every possibility that the Terracycle logo on packaging leads customers to put the waste in their domestic recycling; all the stuff that gets returned to Terracycle ends up in holding facilities as they don't actually recycle any of the plastics themselves. I suspect a lot of it ends up in landfill or sent to third party facilities, as in this article: https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2022-terracycle-tom-szaky/

In practice, the only thing you can really do is change what you buy to reduce the volume of stuff in hard to recycle packaging, choose refills and low waste options, and put pressure on manufacturers to redesign their packaging.

There’s a couple things you could do to make your recycling burden less

switch buying tetra pack cartons to alternatives

laundy pod - very easy switch to bottle or powdered in box box. Saves you money too. Same for dishwasher- switch to finish that have wrappers that dissolve

Your crisp packets can go in with the other soft packets (bread bags, bags etc)

My mum's Tesco delivery driver takes her soft plastics. Ask your driver.

We are very lucky in that all of our recyclables just go into one wheelie bin.

I wish you could chuck it all in the one bin (not glass) and it get sorted out at the recycling plant. There's an assumption you've the mobility and access to transport to take it to the various collection points.
I have to give my tetrapak cartons to a relative when they visit as there aren't any collection bins for miles, thankfully the cartons I use flatten easily so it's not too much of a burden to store them.

It seems too easy for manufacturers to claim to packaging is recyclable when reality is it's unlikely to be. I'm not sure how much actually get reused, gets burnt or as PP rubbish becomes another countries problem.

I wish you could chuck it all in the one bin (not glass) and it get sorted out at the recycling plant. There's an assumption you've the mobility and access to transport to take it to the various collection points

Yes, this is a major issue.
I live in Austria and they are very big on recycling. At least the soft plastic gets picked up in door to door collections as does paper and food waste and general waste. But everything else has to be taken somewhere - cardboard, glass, tins and wearable clothing has to go to the local recycling centre. Batteries have to go back to the supermarket. Larger items have to go to the local tip which is only open on Friday afternoons (great when you are working). You have to pay to dispose of anything that can't be recycled. Wooden items and electrical items are taken free of charge but bulky plastic things and anything like mattresses and so on are weighed and you have to pay for them. There's no service equivalent to the UK where you can call the council and get furniture collected from the kerbside. You have to get it to the tip yourself.

There seems to be no thought whatsoever as to how people who are disabled or without a car or elderly are supposed to get their stuff to the recycling centre or tip. I take stuff for a couple of neighbours who would otherwise have no way of getting rid of glass and tins.
One neighbour ended up with her flat full of junk because she just wasn't able to get to the recycling centre due to health issues and no car.

On the one hand we are supposed to give up our cars and use public transport and we are supposed to recycle our waste diligently. And on the other hand, we can only get rid of recyclable waste by driving it to a recycling centre. Things like glass and tins should be collected from people's homes.

So, no I don't think YABU to give up on recycling some of these things if it's too difficult to take it somewhere to be recycled. And it's not environmentally friendly to be driving around dropping the stuff off at different places.

Have you thought of using some different products? Smol dishwasher and laundry tabs aren't in plastic so there is just card to recycle which is easy. That cuts out a bit of it and they deliver so no shopping for the stuff

Yes! I'm in Spain rather than the UK but the rules are equally complicated - the glass bin takes bottles but not drinking glasses, mirrors or window glass: the paper bin takes paper and cardboard but not sticky paper labels, it takes tissues but not if they have any grease stains on them etc. It goes on and on. In this house we have six people including my mother with dementia, a nine year old and a five year old. I police this stuff as well as I can but it's far too complex for some of the people living here.