Recycling at Queen's

Recycling at
QUEEN'S

Hi! I , m Ollie, 3rd year biologist and JCR Environment
Rep. I’ve been helping the College spread awareness about its new
recycling scheme, and hopefully this leaflet should help separate fact
from fiction, and indeed glass from cardboard. Read on …
Recycling isn’t the most riveting of subjects, but in the words of Roman
Emperor Marcus Aurelius, ‘what we do now echoes in eternity’. And
this is certainly true of plastic water bottles. If thrown in general waste,
a plastic water bottle will take 450 years to disintegrate – indeed, all the
(unrecycled) plastic water bottles ever produced are still intact.
The College wants to make recycling as easy as possible for both
students and staff. There are two main places where you can recycle
in Queen’s – in the green bins found in everyone’s rooms, and in the
College’s brand-spanking new recycling zone, located under the Main
College laundry room.
Here is a quick guide to what can go in the green bin in your room -
Plastics
Most plastic can be recycled. In fact, the
only plastics that cannot go in the green
bin are plastic coffee pods, crisp packets,
black soft stretchy plastic (if it’s not
black it’s fine to recycle) and anything
polystyrene, including (alas) Ahmed’s
takeaway boxes.
Paper and cardboard
This is hopefully pretty selfexplanatory.
But in case you were
wondering, paper envelopes with
plastic windows can go in too.
Metals
Literally anything metal can be recycled,
including Heinz Beans tins. But make
sure all traces of bean juice are removed
first, and this leads me on to….
CONTAMINATION
Items that are dirty, i.e. covered in
food cannot be recycled. It’s annoying,
but please wash food containers before
recycling them. Likewise, Oxfordshire
County Council will refuse to collect bins
that have non-recyclable items in – so
it’s always worth double-checking if you
are unsure if something is recyclable. If in
doubt, don’t.
What about glass?
The eagle-eyed amongst you might be
wondering what to do with those postbop
bottles, or indeed that empty jar of
peanut butter. Glass can be recycled,
but it cannot go in the green bin (it’s
too heavy!). Instead, glass needs to be
taken to Queen’s brand new recycling
zone, located under the Main College
laundry room.
Other items which need to be
taken to the recycling zone include
cardboard packaging from parcels,
which are generally too big to fit
into the little green bins, and which need
to be broken down into manageable pieces.

Why recycle?
Recycling is probably not top of our agendas as we lurch from deadline
to deadline, but it is hugely important. Humanity produces 500 million
tonnes of plastic every year – enough to give every human on Earth
their own body weight in plastic – but recycles just 7.2% of this. As
a consequence, the stuff is everywhere, from bags at the bottom of
the Mariana trench to waste at the top of Mount Everest, and even
microplastics in our blood.
Plastic is a relatively new substance, but it’s probably not great to have it
floating in our oceans and inside us. By recycling, we are preventing more
plastic entering the natural environment and our bodies.
It’s not just plastic though. Recycling paper and cardboard prevents more
forests being felled, and recycling metal reduces demand for raw metals
from mining, one of humanity’s most destructive activities. Much of the
world’s aluminium, raw material for tins and foil, is found under tropical
rainforests, which are stripped to access the ore.
Recycling is just a start – to tackle the huge problems our planet is facing,
it is even more important to reduce consumption; take a look at the College
Sustainability Handbook for more ideas on how to make positive changes.
Want to know more?
Read:
How Bad are Bananas?: The Carbon Footprint of Everything
by Mike Berners-Lee, Profile Books, 2010.
A Climate of Truth: Why We Need It and How To Get It by
Mike Berners-Lee, Cambridge University Press
2025.
Linocut designs:
Oliver Ray (Biology, 2023)
Printed on 100% recycled paper
Please recycle!