The Big Recycling Hunt

This week is the 20th anniversary for Recycling Week and 2023’s theme is The Big Recycling Hunt - it’s like a bear hunt but for recyclable items that are commonly missed in the home, rather than bear’s (sounds much less scary)! Here at Hug At Home we love a bit of recycling! Whether it’s plastic bottles, industrial plastics, or tshirts - we’re a waste not want not company. After all, we are from good ol’ Yorkshire where we throw nowt away! 

Now I know you lovely lot recycle and really care about our environment but I wonder how many of us (myself included, guilty!) throw away items around the home or office that can actually be recycled? Here are just a few items that are actually recyclable - 

• Cleaning & detergent bottles - either reuse them to mix a homemade cleaning solution (au natural!) or pop them in your recycling bin
• Shampoo & shower gel bottles - or most bathroom lotion and potion bottles for that matter! 
• Plastic food tubs & trays - just give them a quick rinse! 
• Empty aerosol cans - once you’ve made yourself smell nice and your hair is in place! 
• Milk bottles - make sure you don’t leave any milk in though! Or better yet get the milkman to deliver your milk in glass bottles, they can then recycle them again and again to bring you fresh milk each week!

Recycle Now has come up with a super helpful guide that highlights other common household items that can be recycled and there’s a handy postcode checker to make sure your local council accepts the items too! So going forwards there’s no excuse!

We often hear about non-recycled items ending up in landfill and in our oceans (poor turtles) but what actually happens to the household items that are recycled? Well that’s where the really clever sciencey stuff comes in - it’s all a bit too clever for me but what I do know is that waste can be turned into wonderful newness…

• Plastic bottles - well we use plastic bottles in our lovely product ranges, from throws and cushions to our beautiful mats!  
• Glass - can be turned into glass wool insulation for homes, which also helps with energy efficiency (how sustainable!)
• Clothes (and other recycled textiles) - another one that we don’t waste here and put into our very own Hug Rugs of course! 
• Aerosol cans - this one blows my mind a bit but recycled aerosol cans are often used to make aeroplanes! So next time you’re on a plane going somewhere lovely you can smile to yourself knowing that you potentially helped build that plane in some small part!

I know you’re super excited to go start finding all the empties in your house and office and recycle them but we must remember to double check that the local council accepts the item. Unfortunately if they don’t you could contaminate the entire recycling container, think of Monster’s Inc and the whole department getting shut down. Well maybe not that dramatic but still a lot of recyclable items then not being able to be made into lovely new things (all your hard work would be for nothing). 

Right, I’m off to see what else we can turn into mats and rugs (we might already have something exciting in the pipeline but shh…)

Busy Lizzie x