Here at Take My Scrap Car, our primary area of interest is of course car scrapping and recycling. Nevertheless, we also have a keen interest in the overall UK recycling landscape in general, which over recent years has made quite incredible progress.

 It is estimated that every year, British households produce a collective mountain of around 30 million tons of waste. Somewhere in the region of 17% of this waste then goes on to be recycled, which isn’t particularly impressive when considering that some countries in Europe recycle more than 50% of all rubbish they produce.

So whichever way you look at it, we still have a long way to go!

As is the case with most things, generating genuine interest in recycling comes down to a combination of increasing awareness of its importance and making the process as simple as possible. In this instance, we’ll be focusing on the former of the two – here’s a quick rundown of just a few interesting facts and figures about recycling in the UK:

  1. Did you know that the energy saved by recycling just one tin can would be sufficient to keep a television running for around 3 hours? Now think about just how many of the things you go through every year!
  2. As for glass bottles, just a single bottle going through the recycling process saves sufficient energy to keep the average home computer running for around half an hour.
  3. Recycling is about far more than just reusing materials. Across the board, somewhere in the region of 70% less energy is needed to create recycled materials and to make them using raw materials.
  4. Research suggests that while most people make at least some kind of effort to recycle, around 60% of what gets thrown in the dustbin could be recycled.
  5. Over the course of a year, every single household in the United Kingdom wastes sufficient energy by throwing away recyclable materials to keep a television running for 5,000 hours.
  6. If all the rubbish produced by British households was to be collected for just eight months, there would be more than enough to completely fill the biggest lake in the country.
  7. When you purchase a product, somewhere in the region of 15% to 20% of the purchase price goes on nothing but the packaging. Which, of course, ultimately ends up in the dustbin.
  8. It is estimated that approximately half of everything that goes into the average dustbin could be used to create compost.
  9. When recycled in accordance with official standards and legislation, more than 80% of everything that goes into the average family car can be reused or recycled.
  10. Last but not least, 90% of UK residents say that they would make further efforts to recycle more household waste, if only it wasn’t so complicated and/or difficult to do so.