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18 March is Global Recycling Day
The day collective opportunity to re-commit our efforts and support for government and business, grassroots and individual recycling habits and actions. Discover how our Restore Recycle programme can help you support the premise and values of Global Recycling Day, every day…
What Global Recycling Day means.
Global Recycling Day, now in its ninth year, has a simple premise. Along with the traditional six resources provided by our planet – water, air, natural gas, oil, coal and minerals – the day’s organising and campaigning group, Global Recycling Foundation, posits recyclable waste as the ‘seventh resource’.
Humans have the technologies, industry and know-how to use materials we reap from the planet and those we create, again and again, without recourse to virgin resources (eg, trees, fossil fuels), vastly reducing water/energy usage and polluting emissions into the bargain. We’ve seen, above, where our ‘waste’ goes when it is recycled, and that many materials can be used ad infinitum, creating industry and jobs with purpose, reducing the extractive, destructive practices of mining, logging and manufacturing.
By treating ‘waste’ as the seventh resource and an opportunity for creative re-use, by always being on the lookout for habits and behaviours that contribute positively, by building the world’s circular economy, Global Recycling Day asserts that we can ALL be #RecyclingHeroes.
Global Recycling Day
Recycling, from the top down
The UK government is on board with seventh resource thinking. Witness their Simpler Recycling legislation, introduced in April 2025 into all businesses of 10 and above employees, with the aim of stratifying and simplifying waste collections, with a heavy emphasis on making recycling the norm.
And now, from the end March 2026, Simpler Recycling is extending into English households (Scotland and Wales have their own set-ups, and Wales is already world Number 2 for percentages recycled). It is hoped that more rigorous household waste management through embracing a four-bin future at home – one each for food and garden waste, paper and cardboard, dry mixed recyclables (tins, glass, hard plastics), and residual waste – will shift the level of waste recycling from the UK’s somewhat meagre overall 45% on to an upwards trajectory.
Simpler RecyclingOur Restore recycling solutions offer businesses the following:
Recycling, from the bottom up
At Restore Datashred we are proud to support the values and aims of Global Recycling Day, and we believe we demonstrate our respect for the health and future of our planet with our Restore Recycle programme.
Indeed, we have a strong track record when it comes to recycling. We already help our confidential waste secure disposal customers with our guarantee of sending 100% of paper shreds to be recycled.
For every tonne of paper that is recycled, we save approximately:
17
felled
trees
4K
kWh
energy
26K
litres
water
600
kilos
C02
All our Restore Recycle services are available through, and managed on, your customer portal, Shred Smart, making staying compliant and responsible super-easy.
And not only that; every one of our customers can also view their personalised environmental report each month to gauge their reduced environmental impacts via their Shred Smart portal dashboard, figures that are sure to be useful, and empowering, across all your stakeholder reporting.
And so, our Restore Recycle specialist services only enhance your contributions to the circular economy, and to sustainability, while ensuring you remain compliant with Simpler Recycling regulations, as outlined earlier.
Did you know?
- There are around seven different types of plastic, that flexible material derived from fossil fuels which functions across so many applications. It is also highly recyclable. Trays, containers, and bottles can all be sorted, cleaned and turned into pellets and re-processed into new packaging, sports fleeces and technical wear, carpets, wheelie bins and dog kennels, for instance. Look out for home recycling for plastic film – the stuff you peel off trays and pots – and bags, coming in 2027.
- Evidence for smelting (ie, recycling) metals dates to Mesopotamia, some 5,000 years ago. Metals are the ultimate recyclable material. Around 57% of all nickel that’s ever been mined is still in use*, for example, and all metals are infinitely adaptable. The tin can you throw away today could become part of a plane, a bridge could become a car, the gold from your laptop or mobile phone could be recovered and used by the Royal Mint to fashion gold coins**. Metals recycling is big business in the UK*, and we are a major exporter to other nations. Let’s keep it that way!
*Metals Recycling in the UK, factsheet produced by British Metals Recycling Association, 2023
** https://www.royalmint.com/invest/discover/invest-in-gold/recycled-gold-at-the-royal-mint/
- Bottles and jars or pots made of glass are what is known as ‘closed loop’ recyclables because they can be 100% recycled, indefinitely. What you dispose of at home or in the workplace can be melted down, reformed and back on the shelves, complete with their jam, wine or pickle contents, within 30 days. Impressive! Drinking glasses, mirrors, and so on, however, need to be kept separately and taken to a recycling centre as they have different melting points to bottles and jars.
- What can be more pleasingly circular than anaerobically digesting food waste to create bio-fertilisers for crops? If that doesn’t impress you, how about your kitchen scraps being broken down to create biogases that are used by the National Grid to produce heat, or biofuels for vehicles? The message is clear: don’t throw your food away in the general waste, recycle it!
- Paper fibres are strong and super-recyclable! They can be reprocessed up to seven times over, into new paper products such as printer paper, medical-grade tissue, toilet roll, delivery boxes and packaging.
Restore Recycle empowers businesses and households to contribute to the government’s Simpler Recycling scheme.
Get in touch with our customer services team, online or by phone on 0800 376 4422 and start making recycling work for you in the workplace and at home so you can be awesome #RecyclingHeroes, for planet and people.
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