Recycle Week, the flagship annual event delivered by Recycle Now for 22 years, returns 22-28 September to collaborate with even more NGO’s, businesses, schools, local authorities and community groups and to inspire even more people to recycle.
Aiming to go beyond awareness-raising and drive citizen behaviour change, the evaluation of last year’s Recycle Week shows that the campaign reached an estimated 7.3 million people. Of these, around 2.9 million indicated they have changed their recycling habits due to the campaign. After Recycle Week 2024, Recycle Now found that the missed capture rate for five key recyclables had dropped from 70% to 64% as a result.
Recycle Now says more must be done to create lasting change and bigger impact and is setting its sights even higher in 2025. Craig Stephens, Campaign Manager, WRAP says, “The impact last year’s campaign had in driving down the rate of common household items are binned when they could be recycled was brilliant. This year we want to take that success even further and need even more partners to get more people recycling more efficiently.”
Recycle Now data shows that 90% of UK households are regularly recycling but that 79% of people miss one or more items that could be recycled in their kerbside collection. The main barriers to recycling are uncertainty about what can and cannot be recycled – many people are unsure about which items belong in their recycling bins and doubts about whether recycling is worthwhile – people express scepticism due to concerns about what happens to their recycling once collected.
Recycle Now continues to use behaviour change science to enhance its campaigns and address these barriers. Last year ‘Rescue Me – Recycle’ saw a radical new creative approach developed to resonate with people who engage less in recycling. The campaign used personification to bring to life the plight of the one billion aftershave and perfume bottles, aerosols, plastic trigger spray bottles, yoghurt pots, and toilet roll tubes incorrectly binned every year – giving them human traits, emotions, and personalities and making it harder to cast them aside.
Recycle Now is now calling on the UK’s largest brands, retailers and businesses together with local authorities to play a key role in showing the public that recycling is worthwhile, and a positive personal act in the fight against climate change.