Recycling is something businesses and households across Yorkshire and the rest of the country should be doing regularly. However, simply throwing away waste you believe to be recyclable into a dry mixed recycling bin and assuming that’s the end of its journey isn’t always the case.
Putting inappropriate items in any recycling bin is a form of wishcycling. According to research from WRAP, around 84% of households in the UK are wishcycling. It’s often accidental and done with the best intentions but the practice can contaminate recycling bins at home and in the workplace.
Learn all about wishcycling and how to avoid it at home and in your business.
What is wishcycling?
Wishcycling is when you put a piece of rubbish in a recycling bin and hope it will be recycled without checking if it will. This could be chucking a greasy pizza box in your household recycling bin or throwing away a glass milk bottle in a dry mixed recycling bin at work without checking if it’s accepted.
Believing you can recycle an item without making sure may put your mind at ease that the product is recycled, but in reality, it may end up in landfill or be incinerated. These are worse for the environment than recycling, so disposing of items in the proper recycling channels rather than throwing them away in hope is vital.
Wishcycling can cause contamination as well. If some kind of packaging is put in a recycling bin with food remnants on or in it, these can slide off and contaminate other bits of recycling. It may mean many bits of recyclable rubbish end up in landfill or incineration rather than being recycled.
Common wishcycling examples
Examples of wishcycling by businesses and households involve incorrect waste items being put in the wrong recycling bin. Often this is throwing away materials with dry mixed recycling that’s not accepted. A prime example is glass, which should be recycled in a separate glass recycling bin by businesses.
For households, examples of wishcycling can vary as what’s accepted in domestic recycling bins differs depending on local authorities (some accept glass, for example). However, the upcoming new Simpler Recycling reforms aim to standardise recycling for homes across England by the end of March 2026.
These are five of the most commonly wishcycled items:
- Drinking glasses – should be recycled separately with other glass waste
- Foil pouches – can contain other materials such as plastic that’s hard to separate
- Toothpaste tubes – contamination from remaining toothpaste
- Plastic film lids – often too thin to recycle with other plastics so should be separated
- Tissues and paper towels – usually too thin and contaminated for recycling so should be disposed of with general waste
How to avoid wishcycling
at work and home
Taking care when you recycle any item within your business or at home helps falling into the wishcycling trap. Follow these steps to ensure you’re recycling and not wishcycling:
- Clean and dry items – bits of food and other residue can damage recycling machinery and reduce the quality of material, so wash, rinse, and dry waste before recycling.
- Check the labels – most packaging has at least one recycling symbol on it but double-check that it correlates with the type of recycling accepted in the bin you’re using.
- Separate single items – to save space it may be tempting to put recyclable materials inside one recyclable container. This can cause problems during processing though, so it’s best to separate items.
- Use different recycling bins – your business should have separate bins for glass recycling, but if you produce high volumes of cardboard, paper, plastic, and metals it might be worth having individual bins for each waste stream rather than using one dry mixed recycling bin.
- Train your team – explain to your employees how and where to recycle all the common items produced in your business. Cover what wishcycling is and the negative impact it can have on the environment and for your business to ensure waste is recycled properly.
Arrange commercial recycling with Divert
Ensure your business is recycling and not wishcycling with the correct bins to separate recyclable rubbish. Save money with free bins for all types of recycling your company creates. There are no bin hire charges or delivery fees – you only pay for collection.
Get a free no-obligation quote for recycling waste collections across Yorkshire with Divert today. Call 0333 444 0118 or contact us online for your bespoke price. We can remove and recycle glass, paper, cardboard, and plastic, as well as dry mixed recycling.
Get a quick quote
Get a quick FREE quote for waste collection
- Quick quote within 1 hr
- All types of waste
- Claim your free bins
- Yorkshire coverage
