Recycle Week: APSE is joining the 2025 Rescue Me! Recycle campaign

Recycle Week: APSE is joining the 2025 Rescue Me! Recycle campaign

Now in its twenty second year, Recycle Week is the nation’s biggest annual celebration of recycling.

This Recycle Week, which is running from 22 – 28 September, Recycle Now and APSE are proud to support the Rescue Me! Recycle campaign.

The campaign continues to shine a spotlight on missed capture items that too often end up in the rubbish bin but can, and should, be recycled.

Following the success of last year’s campaign, Rescue Me! Recycle returns with three new characters joining the recycling mission:

• Shampoo bottles
• Foil
• Toothpaste tubes

Thanks to industry innovation and WRAP’s technical expertise, toothpaste tubes can now be collected by some local authorities at kerbside collections for recycling—marking a major step forward in tackling hard-to-recycle items.

The above three items join the list from last year:

• Trigger sprays
• Aerosols
• Yoghurt pots
• Aftershave and perfume bottles
• Toilet roll tubes

Here at APSE, we are putting missed capture items front and centre.

Here is how APSE is supporting Recycle Week:

• Hosting our Annual Waste, Recycling and Circular Economy Seminar next month on 23 October where we will announce our award winners and hear from leaders in shaping simpler recycling, from Defra, to WRAP and leading local authorities.
• We are thrilled to be joined by Mike Gardner from WRAP’s Local Authority support team who will be presenting at our seminar
• Celebrating those who are leading the way in behaviour change, circular economy and tackling those hard to recycle items at our Innovation Awards
• Sharing the campaign materials and assets with our member authorities
• Sharing best practice and advice on waste and recycling collections, campaigns and policy

Top tips for recycling across the country:

• Recycle more of these items:  Shampoo bottles, foil, *toothpaste tubes (where applicable)

• Make sure you recycle these items: cleaning product bottles, aerosols, yoghurt pots, aftershave and perfume bottles, toilet roll tubes, plastic toiletry bottles and food tins.

If toothpaste tubes are not yet collected at kerbside in your area, use the Recycle Now Locator Tool to find your nearest recycling point. Alternatively, many Boots stores across the UK accept toothpaste tubes and other hard-to-recycle items through their Recycle at Boots scheme, where you can even earn Advantage Card points for participating.

Bonni Jee, APSE Principal Advisor said: “At APSE, we’re all about sharing best practice and helping local authorities achieve excellence in their recycling journey. Our members all want to increase recycling, and it’s great to see WRAP deliver a unified campaign highlighting these often-forgotten items by providing authorities with campaign assets that will help remind their residents to recycle these items. If every resident recycled just one more item, this could make a real impact in improving their recycling rate and preventing valuable resources from going to waste.”

Catherine David, CEO, WRAP, said: “Recycle Week continues to be a powerful moment to inspire action across the UK, and this year’s ‘Rescue Me! Recycle’ campaign is no exception. By highlighting everyday items like shampoo bottles, foil, and toothpaste tubes—things we often overlook—we’re helping people see the real impact of small changes. Thanks to innovation and collaboration, more of these items can now be recycled than ever before. Together with local authorities and communities, we’re making it easier to do the right thing and keep valuable materials in use. Let’s rescue these items from the rubbish and give them a second life.”

Recycling doesn’t have to be confusing.
To find out more about Recycle Week, visit: www.recyclenow.com/RecycleWeek

ENDS

Notes to editors

Click here to download Recycle Week images

About Recycle Week: 

• First staged in 2004, Recycle Week is now the UK’s largest national annual recycling campaign. It’s a week where citizens, media, local governments, and brands come together to meet one goal; to galvanise everyone into recycling more of the right things, more often. www.recyclenow.com/RecycleWeek 

About Recycle Now: 

• For more than twenty years, Recycle Now has encouraged and motivated citizens to recycle more things, more often, from around the home. Using ground-breaking research and behaviour change science, we develop interventions and campaigns to motivate citizens to change their behaviour. Recycle Now is the citizen facing recycling campaign of climate action NGO WRAP.