Let’s face it, we don’t know, do we? In my office, I shove most of my recycling in here (see below), occasionally wondering why it’s necessary to clean food containers, but on the whole glad someone else takes care of my waste:

The story about to be told is a mixed one. Although recycling capacity has dramatically improved over the last decade, I’ll try to demonstrate how the UK’s drive for quantity at the expense of quality has ended up with much of our waste going across the world for reprocessing. I’ll argue that one way to keep it in the UK is for us to put some effort into finding out what we can recycle and taking the advice of that sign in my office –  clean our items.

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During Climate Week 2013 (4-10 March) staff and students of the UCL Energy Institute and UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources and their affiliates within UCL will be blogging here on a range of topics, including: the rebound effect, Ecobuild, solar and wind energy diffusion and collecting data.

To join in or to find out more contact energy@ucl.ac.uk, www.ucl.ac.uk/energy or send us a Tweet @ucl_energy