Recycle Right to Stay #InTheLoop

Sustainable UCL have been working with environmental charity Hubbub, who design campaigns that inspire ways of living that are good for the environment. Reducing waste and making sure materials are recycled is an essential part of creating a more sustainable UCL.  

We're piloting a recycling campaign to inspire students and staff to recycle better, starting in select areas of the UCL campus where we can make the most impact. We want to improve awareness of what can be recycled, the benefits of recycling and the role we all have to play to keep our waste in #TheLoop to be used again and again. We already know UCL is full of keen recyclers: 89% of UCL students and staff asked said they recycle all the time or most of the time. Find out more about the campaign here.

So we’ve been ambitious with our target to increase UCL’s recycling rate to at least 85%. In 2019, UCL had a recycling rate of 62%. While this is high, this still meant 808,510kg of waste that could not be recycled was collected from campus. All of this non-recycled waste was recovered for energy, and none of it went to landfill.  

However, meeting our goal would recycle an extra 490,000kg: that’s more than 40 double decker buses! If recycling one drinks can saves enough energy to power a TV for 4 hours, imagine how much energy and carbon we can save together by recycling 40 double decker buses’ worth of material? 

As well as improving recycling with #TheLoop campaign, we’ll be sharing an online guide for living a lower waste student lifestyle to reduce overall waste.

So help us make change possible, by getting in #theLoop about waste here.