Your Guide to Recycling Right

Recycling is more than just tossing your paper and plastic into the right bin. It's a crucial part of reducing waste, saving energy, and protecting our environment. We've gathered helpful tips for you regarding how to recycle properly from PPAI's recent article.

Why Recycle?

Recycling helps reduce the amount of waste sent to landfills and incinerators. It also conserves natural resources like timber, water, and minerals. By recycling, we save energy because making products from recycled materials often uses less energy than producing them from new materials.

Did You Know?

The "chasing arrows" recycling symbol makes you think that you can just throw the product into the recycling bin, but many people don't know that that's not always the case. This means that it can be recycled, but you have to check with your local facility to see if it's accepted. 

The Basics of Recycling

Know What You Can Recycle: Not everything can go in your recycling bin as we discussed above. Common recyclables include paper, cardboard, glass bottles, metals, and certain plastics. Check your local recycling guidelines to see what's accepted in your area.

Contamination: Something to keep in mind is that items that contain both recyclable and non-recyclable materials cause contamination since they cannot be separated. For example, a stainless steel tumbler with a plastic liner wall cannot go into plastic nor stainless steel because they cannot be separated from one another. 

Don’t Bag Your Recyclables: Place your recyclables directly into the bin. If you put them in plastic bags, they might not get sorted properly and could end up in the landfill. Plus, thin plastic bags can get stuck in the facility’s equipment.

The Bigger Picture

Recycling is just one part of the solution. Reducing the amount of waste we produce and reusing items whenever possible are also key. Consider using reusable bags, bottles, and containers to cut down on single-use items. Every small action adds up to a big impact on our planet.

At Zagwear, we are committed to delivering sustainable product and marketing executions that protect our planet and support human rights across the world. It's important to us that our supply chain share our same values for social and environmental sustainability. Our strict audit and remediation program ensures ethical sourcing and production for all Zagwear client programs. But, we all have to do our part at home too, and that starts with simple things such as recycling properly. Learn more about Zagwear's sustainability efforts here.