Don’t be misled by dotty green ‘recycling’ logo
THIS symbol can be found on the back of thousands of food, beauty and cleaning products, but do you know what it means?
Chances are you have been misled by this confusing and meaningless logo of two green intertwined arrows into believing the packaging is recyclable or even made from recycled material.
But, in fact, it tells you absolutely nothing of the sort
– a mistake I was making until recently and has confused half of Which? readers asked the same question.
It begs the question – why is it there at all?
It is called the Green Dot, but it could be black, or white and yellow.
Whatever the colour, and despite looking similar to other recycling symbols, it means only that the company has paid towards a recycling scheme, not that the product itself can be recycled.
It is used in dozens of countries across Europe, but no such system exists in Britain, meaning it carries no weight here.
Even the company that licences it – Valpak – admits this on its website, suggesting manufacturers are using the symbol to trick us into believing their products look greener than they actually are.
A quick look around your kitchen cupboards or bathroom cabinet will find it on the back of bottles of washing detergent, chocolate wrappers, food pouches such as Uncle Ben’s, and mascara tubes – all items that can’t be recycled.
It is everywhere.
And it is responsible for billions of plastic pouches and other such items wrongly ending up in recycling bins, which then have to be incinerated or sent to landfill. The scale of the problem is huge. Recycling experts say it could be responsible for up to a quarter of useful waste being contaminated.
As the UK’s recycling systems are already a minefield, it is time for the Government to bin the green dot to stop this utterly pointless symbol confusing millions of eco-friendly Brits trying to do their bit.
It’s responsible for billions of bits of plastic ending up in the wrong bins