We have all needed to make adjustments during COVID-19, from setting up multiple home offices and homeschooling spaces to refraining from hugging or kissing family and friends. Restaurants and cafes have also moved across to takeaway menus in an effort to keep their businesses afloat. And in the interests of hygiene, reusable coffee cups and containers have been replaced with plastic versions and takeaway cups. Jean Bailliard, general manager for TerraCycle says there has been a knock-on effect as the amount of household waste generated has increased. “People have been buying more cleaning products — and those products are not always easy to recycle,” he says. “During times like this, we tend to buy more packaged goods like vegetables, just to be safe. As well, gloves, masks and other PPE are not recyclable. “It makes sense — it’s a natural behaviour — but in the process we have made an impact on the environment.” TerraCycle is an innovative recycling business that specialises in hard to recycle materials. These days, Jean says, the onus is very much on the consumer to dispose of their packaging with care, which is a shift from years gone by. Remember when the milkman delivered bottles of milk to your door and picked up the empties? For millions of Australians the sound of clinking glass bottles used to signal the start of the day. While many of us enjoy the convenience of buying our milk in plastic cartons from the supermarket, the responsibility for the bottle used to lie with the manufacturer. “With something like milk bottles, back in the day the product belonged to the manufacturer so it was in their best interests to make those bottles last longer,” Jean says. “By making it in cheap plastic, you saw a massive drop in recycling rates. In the past, we drank Coke in glass bottles and now we drink it from products that are harder to recycle.” He says it is easy to feel that as consumers that we have no power to change things, but that’s not necessarily the case. And now that restrictions have eased and community recycling centres are reopening, it’s the perfect time to start clearing out packaging. “The first thing is to educate yourself,” Jean says. “Check your council website to see what can and can’t be recycled. In Australia, the recycling label is a clear indication if the packaging is recyclable or not. “With soft plastics, you can take them to bins outside Coles and Woolworths.” If you want to take it a step further, Jean says it’s worth engaging with brands on social media sites like Facebook and asking questions. “With things like beauty products, see what their policy is,” he says. “When consumers challenge brands on platforms like Facebook explaining that they like the product but they want to know how sustainable it is, the brands will often respond.” Jean says most products are recyclable, it’s just a matter of how many steps there are involved in the process and whether it makes a profit. Recycled plastics have been used for everything from creating textiles for clothing through to winners’ podiums in the Olympic Games. But we could do better. “Aluminium cans are widely accepted for recycling, but aluminium coffee capsules are not, because they’re not so easy to recycle,” he says. “With the capsules, you have to separate them and get rid of the coffee grounds. It doesn’t make sense from a business standpoint.”