All that plastic and packaging you get with groceries and deliveries. All the cardboard from those takeaway pizzas. All those metal tins and cans. We create a lot of waste. But luckily we have ways of reusing those materials.

Hi, I’m Jude. Every time you throw something away, it ends up somewhere. That can have a bad impact on the environment. Lots of waste goes to landfill, where it just sits being… well, rubbish.

But at places like this recycling centre behind me, some waste can be turned back into raw materials and reused. That’s called recycling. Let’s investigate…

Either people paid by the government, or the public themselves, can bring waste here and it’s sorted in different areas, depending on what type of material it is.

Here they can recycle: garden waste, wood, bricks, carpets, cardboard, paper, various electrical items, types of metal like food tins and aluminium, and of course, plastic.

All that waste is then transferred inside, where it’s carefully sorted. It’s then taken to a recycling facility and put into recycling machines. They can turn the waste back into a material we can use.

Those are all materials that are recyclable, but many people feel not enough material is made to be re-used. So much plastic, like the bags at supermarkets, can only be used once and they take a thousand years to eventually break down into nothing. Until then they just sit around and harm the environment.

When people say ‘environment’, it describes not only the area just around us, but the world as a whole. It’s dangerous for animals if they swallow or get stuck in plastic, and plastic releases pollution into the water as it dissolves, and into the air if it’s burnt.

I’m back home now from the recycling centre. We have different bins at home to help sort between recyclable and non-recyclable materials. Your local council gives information to explain what those different materials are.

But with humans creating so much harmful waste, the public can’t tackle this crisis alone: we need our leaders to make laws so companies use recyclable material only.

The gas, oil and coal industries create plastic and all sorts of other things we need, like energy. But they have a negative impact on the environment.

Over time, the waste they create and chemicals they release heat up the planet, making our weather more unpredictable and more dangerous.

What can you do to reduce your impact on the environment?

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