8 recycling mistakes MOST people make and how to avoid them

While recycling isn’t the green solution to waste we once thought, it still plays an important role in managing our waste, at least for the time being. I like to see myself (and our society) as transitioning towards zero waste, which not only means generating less waste, but also generating less recycling. Yep you read that right: we need to recycle LESS (read more about that in an earlier article). This basically means we need to buy less disposable stuff. But in the meantime, here are a few tips to make sure you’re recycling correctly.

So many recycling bins I walk past each week in the area where I live (with a mostly highly-educated, upper-middle class, SUPPOSEDLY environmentally-aware population), contain so many things that shouldn’t be in there. Many of us are ‘aspirational recyclers’, meaning we want things to be recyclable so we put them in our recycling bin. But not only does this fool us into thinking we’re greener than we actually are, it can also result in contamination of entire shipments of recyclable materials, meaning the whole lot has to go to landfill ☹ ☹ ☹!

So we need to make sure we are NOT trying to recycle things that can’t be recycled and that we ARE recycling everything that can be. Here are 8 common recycling mistakes that many people make:

1. Not recycling anything that isn’t from the kitchen — I recall a conversation with two work colleagues from a few years ago, when we were discussing which recyclables we rinse out before putting…