"Recycling all goes to landfill. It gets shipped overseas. It’s all a scam.”
We hear it constantly. And to be fair, most people never get to see what happens after the recycling truck leaves the street. Once it disappears from the kerb, the whole system becomes a bit of a mystery — and that leaves plenty of room for rumours, half-truths and some very confident opinions. So we decided to uncover the truth.
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Proof of Recycling takes you behind the scenes of real recycling facilities to follow everyday materials through the system and see what actually happens to them. We’ve filmed the journey of glass, plastics, paper and cardboard, liquid paperboard cartons, scrap metal and tyres, showing where they go, how they’re processed and what happens next. This isn’t about pretending recycling is perfect. It isn’t. Contamination happens. Some materials are harder to recover than others. Systems have limitations, and not everything put in a recycling bin will make it through the process. But that is very different from saying it all goes to landfill.
We wanted to move beyond the rumours and show the system for what it really is. Don’t believe us? Watch what happens.
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Recycling Isn’t Magic. It’s a System.
Putting something in the recycling bin doesn’t automatically mean it will be recycled. For recycling to work, the right material needs to go into the right collection system, arrive with minimal contamination, be sorted successfully, processed by the right facility and have a genuine end market or use at the other end. That’s why contamination matters. It’s why local recycling rules matter. And it’s why some materials have much stronger recycling pathways than others. Proof of Recycling isn’t about pretending the system is perfect. It’s about understanding how it actually works. Because when we understand the system, we can use it better, make smarter choices and stop relying on myths to fill in the gaps. Got Something You Want Us to Follow? We love finding out what actually happens to the stuff we throw away, and there are plenty more materials, products and recycling claims we’d like to investigate. If there’s something you’ve always wondered about, a recycling myth you want checked, or a product you’d like us to follow through the system, let us know. Send us your questions, ideas or suggestions — we might just follow the journey next.
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