How you’re recycling plastic wrong, from coffee cups to toothpaste
If you don’t clean your recycling, it can harm more than it helps. And that icon with the arrows is virtually meaningless
- This week we’re exploring plastic pollution as part of our six-month Toxic America series. Please support this journalism and help us hit our $150,000 goal
It’s a familiar scene: you stand at the bin, trash in hand, and wonder: “Can I recycle this?”
We tend to throw it in the recycling bin anyway, in the hope that some unknown person, somewhere else, will sort it out. Recyclers call this aspirational recycling, or wish-cycling.