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Recycle Week is a celebration of recycling across the nation. The theme for Recycle Week in 2026 is “Rescue Me”, focusing on encouraging people to rescue recyclable items from the rubbish bin.
2026 has been a big year for recycling, already! Upcoming changes, and packaging developments, all helping improve recycling rates. But nothing changes without people choosing to recycle. This year, we’re focused on maximising the impact of these changes in behaviour, so that the right things go in the right bins.
When everyday items are recycled properly in the UK, they go through collection, sorting, and reprocessing to be transformed into new products.
At AB Waste Disposal we prioritise our recycling percentages.
Our latest stats:
Wood 99%
Inert Materials 99%
Green Waste 98%
Scrap metals / aluminium 97%
Cardboard 95%
UPVC Window Frames 92%
Plasterboard 100%
Gas and Water Pipes 95%
Cables and Wiring 96%
Chipboard, MDF, Plywood 98%
Hard Plastics 98%
Recycling symbols appear on lots of everyday household items and can help you get your recycling right.
Here’s a guide to the symbols used in the UK.
Packaging with this label can be cleaned and placed into your recycling bin for kerbside collection.
This symbol is applied to packaging which cannot be collected from your home recycling. Check the Recycling Locator if this can be taken to a local centre; if not it can be placed in general waste.
When you see this recycling symbol, it means the packaging must be rinsed of any food residue before placing in your recycling bin. This ensures it doesn’t contaminate any other recycling materials.
Caps and lids under 40mm in diameter are too small to be captured for recycling, as they fall through the holes in the screens at the sorting facility. If you see this recycling symbol, putting the lid back on after rinsing will help it to be captured and recycled.
You can see this symbol on plastic wrapping such as bread bags, fruit and veg bags, crisp packets and chocolate wrappers. You can recycle this type of packaging at recycling points in selected supermarkets.
Some packaging components need separating before you dispose of them. You may see a label like this on packaging where a sleeve, film or liner can be easily removed from the main packaging item. In this case, the sleeve should be removed from a bottle by pulling a perforated strip, the bottle can be recycled but the sleeve goes in the general waste.
What is recycling contamination?
Put simply, contamination in recycling refers to anything that’s in your recycling that shouldn’t be.
It could be something that has been tainted by a material or substance that isn’t recyclable, such as a grease-soaked cardboard takeaway pizza box or the food residue from a can of beans.
Why is contamination bad?
There are several reasons why it’s important to put the right things in the right bin. First and foremost, if there are too many of the wrong things, it can mean that whole lorry-loads of recycling can’t be recycled. In other words, a few bad apples spoil the whole barrel.
Another consideration is the increased costs of collecting and sorting contaminated recycling – costs that are ultimately borne by all of us, as taxpayers. By making sure the right things are in the right containers, we can all help save time and money and make the recycling process more effective.
Contamination can also reduce the value of the recyclable materials, and can lead to them having to be disposed of rather than recycled into new products. What’s more, some types of contamination can even be dangerous for the recycling and waste workers handling it.
In short, contamination is best avoided! Doing so can be confusing at a time when we’ve not yet got a recycling system that works the same way across the country, but as the recycling system becomes more consistent, things will get simpler.
