Tips and advice for shedding those plastic pounds this World Oceans Day What’s left is the hard-to-recycle stuff. Terracycle is a godsend for the guilty. I could fill this entire screen by listing all the awkward plastics that Terracycle recycles - around 50 in total, many of them featuring in my own eco crimes list: biscuit/cake/crisp wrappers, contact lens packaging, toys, food pouches, toothbrushes, toothpaste tubes, cosmetics, pens, disposable gloves, coffee pods, Pringles packets

Plastic pollution, waste reduction and the importance of protecting the environment are big topics at the moment and lots of us have been making a more conscious effort to recycle the items we use.

Tubes for crisps are made of mixed materials and so these can't be recycled without being separated first, which can be tricky. Crisp packets also can't be recycled at home.

However, a company called Terracycle recycles crisp packets into plastic pellets to make into new products. If you do have crisp packets, you can save them up and take them to your nearest drop off point.

A spokesman for innovative recycling organisation TerraCycle explained: "Where it becomes more complicated is when a waste item is made out of a complex material, or several materials, as is the case with most toys. The process of recycling these materials is complicated and costly and the end product is worth less than the cost of recycling the waste, so the economics simply do not work."

The most common critique of luxury beauty is that we’re just “paying for the packaging”. The cream or lotion inside, so we’ve been told, is but a sliver of the total cost, and the inflated markup is thanks to the sophisticated pumps, nozzles and spatulas that dispense the product. Which is why the past few years have given rise to brands that have done away with the bells and whistles of traditional beauty packaging, offering potent formulations for a fraction of the price. This, combined with increased competition from independent disruptors, and growing demand for sustainability, has provoked a beauty packaging arms race between the world’s cosmetics giants. And in an industry that’s projected to grow to £131bn by 2025, there’s plenty at stake. Brands are increasingly keen to offer options to offset their plastic use – Deciem, Caudalie and L’Occitane all have in-store drop-offs in partnership with TerraCycle, which specialises in hard-to-recycle packaging and materials. And all accept recyclables from any beauty brand, not just their own.

Toothpaste tablets are marketed as a plastic-free, more portable oral care solution – James Shackell bites down in search of a better brush While enterprises like TerraCycle offer collection-points for oral care products, plenty still end up in landfill. Moreover, many toothpastes – roughly half according to Dutch NGO Plastic Soup Foundation’s Beat the Microbead campaign – also contain microplastics, tiny indestructible plastic polymers that get spat down the sink and washed into the food chain.

Approximately eight million tonnes of plastic makes its way into our oceans each year, and just nine per cent of plastic is recycled worldwide. And the beauty industry – with its large amount of packaging and non-recyclable items such as cotton buds and face wipes – has historically been one of the number one culprits. Fortunately the beauty world is now catching up, with many brands making concerted efforts to adopt more sustainable practices in an effort to limit their impact on the environment. Because of its fiddly packaging and tough formulas, make-up used to be one of the trickiest beauty products to recycle. In fact, Maybelline found that a third of make-up wearers didn’t even know that these products could be recycled. Here to tackle the problem, Maybelline has teamed up with Terracycle to introduce make-up recycling bins in over a thousand Tesco, Boots, Sainsbury’s and Superdrug stores across the country. Simply drop in any old cosmetics, from ANY brand, and you can be sure they’ll be properly recycled. Click here to find your nearest drop-off point.

From make-up to skincare, here are the eco-friendly beauty products that every woman who wants to look flawless and save the world at the same time, needs to have on her radar... 3. BOG Skincare Energise & Detoxify Sheet Mask - £12

Our beauty routines should feel positive, with mood-boosting makeup and comforting scents. Our bathroom stash should feel like somewhere to escape to for small acts of self care. Now, brands like Garnier, Maybelline, Kiehl's and L'Occitane are working with recycling company TerraCycle to create drop-off points (you can usually find them in supermarkets) for your beauty empties, with some exceptions such as aerosol cans, perfume bottles, nail polish bottles, and nail polish remover bottles.

The tough plastic box bears a sticker that says it cannot be collected from most doorstep recycling boxes. Instead, you have to take it to one of 112 TerraCycle drop-off points in the UK.

The parable of Walkers Crisps is worth remembering next time you encounter a mainstream consumer item that is not recyclable, such as butter wrappers, coffee bags and the plastic backing on An Post stamps. Walkers Crisps became a symbol of unrecyclability in Britain when passionate consumers of the product became so frustrated at not being able to recycle their empty crisp packets that they began posting them in large numbers to Walkers HQ, inundating Royal Mail sorting offices with odious cheese and onion smelling parcels. Should we perhaps follow suit and fill An Post boxes with the plastic-coated label-backing from its stamp books? Walkers responded admirably to the provocation with a special recycling scheme run by terracycle.com that recycles all brands of crisp bags sent to them. They are heated and extruded into plastic pellets to be used in the manufacture of products such as outdoor furniture and flooring. The scheme will continue until a new form of recyclable packaging that ensures the same level of freshness is developed by 2025.