Stop, Look, Recycle – Recycle Week

This year’s Recycle Week focuses on increasing awareness on the recyclable packaging that often finds its way into general waste.

This month, between 22-28 September, the UK puts its annual spotlight on recycling. Now in its 22nd year, Recycle Week returns to encourage the British public to recycle items that too often find themselves thrown into general waste rather than the recycling bin. With the theme of ‘Rescue Me! Recycle’, the campaign uses events, posters and social media content to give a voice to overlooked items such as yoghurt pots, foil and aerosol cans that many people forget should be recycled.

Recycling Awareness

Recycle Week is led by the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), a global environmental action NGO that aims to change the world’s product and food systems to a more circular living approach. Delivered by WRAP’s ‘Recycle Now’ campaign, Recycle Week 2025 focuses on increasing recycling rates for toiletries packaging such as perfume bottles and toilet-roll tubes, as well as highlighting the potential to reclaim toothpaste tubes via some local authority services and retailer take-back services.

Following last year’s Recycle Week, a Recycle Now survey found that the campaign had a direct impact on the collections of five key materials for recycling. Following the campaign, missed capture of perfume bottles and aftershave containers fell from 53% to 50%, while toilet roll tubes failing to be recycled fell from 27% to 19% and aerosol cans decreasing from 24% to 19%.

However, while the majority of households claim to recycle, WRAP’s research shows that the reality is more complicated. Over half of UK households miss at least one item that could be recycled from kerbside collections, while nearly nine in ten sometimes include materials that aren’t accepted. That means resources are lost, costs increase and the system becomes harder to manage. Recycle Week aims to close that gap – not through guilt but through visibility, creativity and clarity.

Across The Board Awareness

While public knowledge of recyclable products and materials is vital, participation in Recycle Week isn’t limited to individual households. Businesses are encouraged to align their office and packaging practices with recycling best practice, while schools are invited to use the campaign as a springboard for STEM and citizenship activities. In addition, local councils and community groups are encouraged to use posters, bin stickers and events to raise awareness. WRAP has created a full suite of free campaign assets, from social media templates to vehicle graphics.

But the event is about more than eye-catching posters. It’s part of a broader cultural shift toward a circular economy, one where we don’t simply use and discard, but design with reuse and recycling in mind, keeping materials in circulation for as long as possible. By ‘rescuing’ everyday objects from the wrong waste stream, we’re helping to reduce waste, save energy and conserve resources.

So when Recycle Week arrives, look out for the ‘Rescue Me!’ characters in your neighbourhood, on your social media streams or on your council’s refuse collection trucks. It’s a reminder that sustainability doesn’t always hinge on large-scale changes and can be as simple as rinsing out a yoghurt pot or recycling a toilet-roll tube.

For more information on Recycle Week, go to www.wrap.ngo/take-action/recycle-now/recycle-week