Global Recycling Day 2024: What is it?
- Published
Recycling Day encourages us to work together with recycling to help the planet.
18th March is Global Recycling Day.
The yearly celebration is all about getting people to wasting as little as possible, reuse whenever possible, and encouraging world leaders to work together to recycle more.
The Global Recycling Foundation, which organises the annual day, says recycling is so important because it stops 700 million of tonnes of carbon emissions each year.
Carbon emissions contribute to climate change, which causes big problems for everything on the planet.
Read on, then try our quiz at the bottom of the page.
The plastic problem
Recycling: The lifecycle of a milk bottle
Plastics are super useful, and used every day in lots of different ways but they create a problem once they've been used and thrown away.
They don't break down or rot in the same way natural materials do. The pieces get smaller and smaller but last for a very long time.
14 million tonnes of plastic end up in the oceans every year, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. This can harm sea life and is very bad for the environment.
If we reuse or recycle plastic, it helps stop that happening.
Have a reusable water bottle with tap water instead of buying bottled water
Encourage adults to buy loose vegetables, not ones in plastic bags
Say no to plastic straws, polystyrene trays and cutlery
Take a rucksack shopping - and save money on that plastic bag!
Plastic progress
Lots of energy is used to make things we throw away, so if we reuse or recycle we can stop energy being wasted
Global Recycling day has happened every year since 2018, and there has been some progress on plans to cut plastic waste since then.
UK governments have banned lots of single use plastics like straws, cotton buds, microbeads (which were used to make face washes scratchy).
They've also introduced laws to charge more for plastic shopping bags and the UK Government is also planning to introduce a ban on plastic cutlery in England in October.
The Scottish government is planning a plastic bottle deposit scheme this August, where it will pay you 20p for returning bottles and cans.
7.7 billion plastic bottles are used every year in the UK, according to Water UK
Despite this, campaigners say that there is still lots of work to do.
The recycling rate in the UK has actually gone down in recent years, in 2020 44.4% of our waste was recycled (down from 44.5% in 2015) and the government is aiming for 50%.
The government blame the drop on disruption caused by the COVID pandemic.
Some people also argue recycling is too complicated, because there are so many different bins and types of rubbish to sort out.
So why not test yourself?
How much do you know about recycling plastics? Take our true or false quiz below to find out.
If you can't see the quiz, click here.