Five Items You Didn’t Know You Could Recycle

There is nothing more annoying than arriving at your favorite place in nature to find a piece of rubbish discarded on the ground. “What kind of ignorant person could do that?”, you think to yourself.

What if you were responsible for the rubbish? Many things we use and dispose of in our everyday lives enter the environment after we have disposed of it, unbeknownst to us. Recycling is the best way to ensure your waste doesn’t turn into pollution.

Recycling is not all about the cliché act of throwing a plastic bottle in the recycling bin. Many companies and programs provide recycling options for specific items, and you simply have to reach out to them. Here are five things you may not know could be recycled:

1. VHS Cassettes – technotrash companies specialize in recycling old electrical items.
2. Crayons – some companies create brand new crayons from old ones. It can also be done quite easily from your own home using a standard oven.
3. Running shoes – old shoes in good condition can make new shoes for someone in need. The soles are also used by some programs to make surfaces for various sporting courts.
4. Apple products – Apple will take back any apple product and recycle it for free!
5. Christmas lights – the recycling of lights is already a big industry. This includes those boxes of Christmas lights hung on the roof.

By recycling as many things as possible in our own lives, we can all help to move away from the take, make, consume and dispose of approach towards a more circular economy.