Recycling education connects facilities, classroom encouragement and everyday decisions. The latest figures show high access to school recycling bins in England, but less consistent formal planning and prompting. They also show strong environmental concern among children and adults, alongside long-term differences in reported participation and material recovery.
Contents
- School recycling provision
- Pupil encouragement and behaviour
- Children’s environmental learning
- Adult recycling and environmental concern
- European attitudes to waste education
- U.S. material recovery facts
School recycling provision
School leaders reported broad access to recycling bins during the 2023-2024 academic year. Bins were reported by 94% of primary school leaders, 86% of secondary school leaders and 88% of special-school leaders. These figures describe reported provision, not the number, location or condition of bins in each school. The source is the School and college voice: April 2024.
Formal waste planning was less widespread. Only 42% of school leaders said their school had a waste-management plan in the 2023-2024 academic year. Among schools with such a plan, 31% had reviewed it since the start of that academic year, compared with 25% that had reviewed it during the 2022-2023 academic year. Because these percentages refer to schools that already had a plan, they should not be read as the share of all schools that reviewed one.
Schools also reported active efforts to reduce waste and encourage recycling. Since the school year began, 81% of primary school leaders said their school had tried to do this, compared with 71% of secondary school leaders. The gap between reported bins and reported activity suggests that access to equipment and a broader education or behaviour programme are different measures.
| School measure | Reported share | Period or population |
|---|---|---|
| Primary schools with recycling bins | 94% | 2023-2024 academic year |
| Secondary schools with recycling bins | 86% | 2023-2024 academic year |
| Special schools with recycling bins | 88% | 2023-2024 academic year |
| Schools with a waste-management plan | 42% | 2023-2024 academic year |
| Primary schools trying to reduce waste and encourage recycling | 81% | Since the school year began |
| Secondary schools trying to reduce waste and encourage recycling | 71% | Since the school year began |
Pupil encouragement and behaviour
Pupil and learner responses provide a different view of the same school environment. In a March 2024 survey, 68% said their school or college had recycling bins, while 67% said teachers or other staff encouraged them to recycle. The Parent, pupil and learner voice: March 2024 reports these as pupil and learner perceptions, so they are not directly interchangeable with school leaders’ reports.
The frequency of encouragement varied. Twenty-eight percent said staff encouraged recycling every day or at least once a week. At the other end, 22% said staff never encouraged them to recycle. This leaves a substantial group receiving occasional encouragement or choosing another response, rather than showing a single uniform school experience.
Among pupils and learners who had school recycling bins, 76% said they had recycled at least some of their own non-food rubbish during the previous week. Fifty-two percent said they had recycled most or all of it, while 11% said they had recycled none. These figures refer to self-reported behaviour, to non-food rubbish, and specifically to the previous week in the March 2024 survey.
The results make the education question practical: a bin is an important access point, but regular reminders and clear sorting guidance may shape whether pupils use it. The data do not establish that encouragement caused the reported behaviour, so the figures are best used to describe patterns and identify questions for school programmes.
Children’s environmental learning
The Children’s People and Nature Survey for England: 2025 update found that 85% of children and young people surveyed said looking after the environment was important to them. Eighty-nine percent said they would like to do more to look after the environment. Recycling was one of the reported actions: 55% said they took part in waste recycling.
Other reported learning and communication activities were less common. Twenty-three percent said they had read or watched about the environment, 31% said they had talked to friends or family about it, and 14% said they had raised environmental awareness online. These measures describe reported actions in the 2025 survey and should not be interpreted as a ranking of educational quality.
The survey also recorded reasons for looking after nature in survey wave 9. Saving wildlife was selected by 70% of children and young people. Making nature better to be in and human health were each selected by 66%, while helping stop climate change was selected by 51%.
Reported recycling participation was lower in 2025 than in 2021: it fell from 71% in 2021 to 55% in 2025. The two percentages come from surveys across 2021-2025; the figures show a change in reported participation, but do not by themselves explain why it occurred.
Awareness of a named public resource was also measured. In 2025, 46% had heard of the Countryside Code and 43% had not. Among those who had heard of it, 51% said they heard about it at school. This is not a recycling measure, but it illustrates the role schools can play in communicating wider environmental guidance.
Adult recycling and environmental concern
The Adults’ Year 6 Annual Report (April 2025 - March 2026) recorded that 79% of adults reported recycling items in the last month in Year 6, covering April 2025 to March 2026. This was down from 85% in Year 1, covering April 2020 to March 2021, within the survey’s reported series.
Other actions in Year 6 included bringing one’s own bags when shopping, reported by 75% of adults, and switching off lights and appliances to save energy or protect the environment, reported by 69%. Buying second-hand items was reported by 37%, compared with 28% in Year 1. The environmental-attitudes action question had a Year 6 sample of 5,002 respondents.
Environmental concern remained visible in the same Year 6 reporting. Climate change was identified among the four greatest environmental concerns by 44% of adults. Pollution of rivers, lakes and groundwater was selected by 39%, while plastic pollution was selected by 37%. These are concern measures, not estimates of the amount of waste produced or recycled.
| Adult measure | Reported share | Period |
|---|---|---|
| Recycled items in the last month | 79% | April 2025-March 2026 |
| Brought own bags when shopping | 75% | April 2025-March 2026 |
| Switched off lights or appliances | 69% | April 2025-March 2026 |
| Bought second-hand items | 37% | April 2025-March 2026 |
| Selected climate change as a top concern | 44% | April 2025-March 2026 |
| Selected plastic pollution as a top concern | 37% | April 2025-March 2026 |
European attitudes to waste education
The 2020 Eurobarometer, summarised in European citizens’ attitudes towards waste, recycling and waste sorting, placed waste and public information in a wider European context. Forty-five percent of Europeans ranked waste accumulation among their four most important environmental issues. Sixty-five percent rated designing products for easier recycling as very important, and 55% rated educating the public on plastic-waste reduction as very important.
Information was also identified as a possible intervention. Twenty-four percent said that more information and education on waste separation or energy consumption would be the most effective way to tackle environmental problems. In the previous six months, 65% reported separating most of their waste, 45% reported avoiding over-packaged products and 22% said they bought products marked with an environmental label.
Trust is part of the education challenge. More than 48% totally agreed that many products claim to be environmentally friendly without their claims being trustworthy. This figure is from the 2020 Eurobarometer and should not be treated as a current estimate without newer measurement.
The same source includes EU packaging-waste data for 2021. Approximately 84.3 million tonnes of packaging waste were generated, equal to 188.69 kilograms per person. The EU average packaging-waste recycling rate was 64%. Quantities increased at an average annual rate of about 1.8% from 2011 to 2021 while recycling rates remained stable. These are EU-level quantities and rates, not measures of household education alone.
U.S. material recovery facts
The U.S. figures in Containers and Packaging: Product-Specific Data are from 2018, so they provide a historical baseline for educational guides rather than a current national estimate. The United States generated 292.4 million short tons of municipal solid waste in 2018. About 94 million short tons were recycled or composted, producing a 32.1% recycling-and-composting rate.
Material categories varied considerably. Paper and paperboard packaging had an overall recycling rate of 80.9%. Corrugated-box generation was 33.3 million tons, with about 32.1 million tons recycled, a 96.5% recycling rate. These figures can help explain why “recyclable” is not a single category: outcomes depend on the material and the collection system.
Glass containers generated 9.79 million tons, of which 3.06 million tons were recycled. The recycling rate was 31.3%; 55.4% of glass-container waste was landfilled and 13.4% was combusted with energy recovery.
Plastic results were lower in this historical dataset. U.S. plastic containers and packaging generated 14.53 million tons and recycled 1.98 million tons, a 13.6% recycling rate. PET bottles and jars had a 29.1% rate, while HDPE natural bottles had a 29.3% rate. Plastic bags, sacks and wraps generated 4.20 million tons and recycled 0.42 million tons, a 10% rate.
These U.S. results are useful for lessons that distinguish collection access, material type and actual recovery. They should remain labelled as 2018 data, just as the European packaging figures should remain labelled as 2021 data and the school and behaviour results should retain their stated survey periods.