Thirty years ago, when Planet Ark ran its first National Recycling Week, Australians recycled about seven per cent of their waste, roughly eighty kilograms a year each. This year's week, Monday 9 to Sunday 15 November, arrives with different numbers: a national recycling rate above sixty per cent, about forty three million tonnes a year, and around one thousand seven hundred kilograms per person. Those are Planet Ark's own figures and the story they tell is plain. Most of what changed was not a machine; it was habit, learned slowly in kitchens and school halls. This year's theme is Join the Cycle, and the ask is in the right order: reduce first, reuse and repurpose next, recycle what is left, and close the loop by buying things made with recycled content, because a bottle only truly goes round if somebody buys the next one. Councils, schools and workplaces run events through the week, and the campaign's Recycling Near You lookup tells you what your council accepts and where the awkward things go.

A Return and Earn drop off in New South Wales, where bottles and cans go back for a refund.
A Return and Earn drop off in New South Wales, where bottles and cans go back for a refund. Photograph: A Return and Earn drop off in New South Wales, where bottles and cans go back for a refund by Radiotrefoil, via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY-SA 4.0.

If you take one habit from the week, make it the awkward things. Soft plastics, batteries, light globes, phones, paint, printer cartridges and clothing each have a home that is almost never the kerbside bin, and putting them there is the mistake that spoils a good load. Put your postcode into Recycling Near You, write the three nearest drop offs on the fridge, and keep a bag by the door for the next time you pass one. For the kerbside bin, three habits do most of the work: empty and rinse, leave lids and labels the way your council asks, and keep it loose, never bagged. Then do the thing the campaign is really about and buy the recycled version of something you already buy: toilet paper, bin liners, a notebook, a garden bed. In 1996 the week asked people to begin. This one asks us to finish the circle.

Our short take: from Planet Ark's National Recycling Week pages and its Recycling Near You service. Figures are Planet Ark's own. Photographs: as credited in captions.