Recycling Tracker survey in Northern Ireland: Spring 2025

This year, WRAP’s Recycling Tracker celebrates 21 years of tracking the attitudes, knowledge and behaviour of citizens in Northern Ireland. It is the largest survey of its kind, highlighting the critical issues we must tackle to make real progress. 

The Recycling Tracker provides a fresh look at citizens’ attitudes and behaviours when it comes to recycling.

The Recycling Tracker survey uses boost sampling in Northern Ireland to provide a robust, enhanced sample of Northern Irish citizens. Fieldwork was undertaken online, from 13 March – 31 March 2025. A total of 520 adults in Northern Ireland were interviewed who have responsibility for dealing with the rubbish and recycling in the home. The sample set quotas on age, gender, region, social class, and ethnicity to closely represent the nation’s population. 

Key findings

• Social norms: 22% of citizens in NI perceive a strong social norm for dry recycling, with an average score of 7.2 out of 10.  
• Worthwhileness: 74% of citizens in NI agree with the statement “I feel my recycling efforts are worthwhile”.  
• Recycling participation is high:  90% of citizens in NI report they regularly recycle at home.  
• These perception and knowledge gaps have direct operational consequences and as a result missed capture and contamination remain high.
• Contamination:  86% of citizens in NI place at least a non-accepted item into the recycling bins, above the UK average of 81%. Common contaminants continue to include drinking glasses (46%) at the top of the list.
• Missed capture:  73% of citizens in NI still miss the opportunity to recycle one or more items, especially glass perfume and aftershave bottles (48%) and foil (28%).
• Inaccuracy is exacerbated by knowledge gaps:  Over one in three (35%) citizens in NI report that they are “not sure if some items can be recycled or not”. Resulting in only around one in ten (9%) being “very confident” (in line with the UK average). Whereas just over three in five (61%) of citizens in NI say they are only mostly confident (UK – 58%) on what can and can’t be recycled. Confusion persists around items like batteries, food/drink foil pouches and plastic wrapping film.
• Communications are vital in boosting confidence:  80% of citizens who received communications from the council in 2024/2025 are very/mostly confident in what can/can’t be recycled, compared to 46% of citizens who don’t know/never received communications from the council.
• Food waste recycling:  Just over four in five (81%) of citizens in NI have access and use a food waste recycling service – an increase of 4% compared to 2024. However, 13% have a service but do not use it and 6% claim they do not have a service.
• Reuse and refill appetite: Around nine in ten (85-94%) citizens in NI say they could be motivated to use in-store or online reuse models for beverage, personal care or food/drink glass packaging. The biggest motivators are financial savings, followed by environmental benefits. The main barriers reported are cost, convenience and hygiene concerns.
• Recycling at work: Just over one in four (26%) citizens in NI do not recall seeing any recycling facilities in their office, with two in three (66%) recalling seeing them. Moreover, 82% report to recycle often at their workplace.  
• Recycling on the go: Out and about in a town/city centre or at a shopping malls are the most common places that citizens in NI have noticed recycling facilities. Despite that, both places have the least rates for usage; only just over half (53%) say that they use them frequently/fairly often.

Recommendations

DAERA

The 2025 recycling tracker finds ongoing evidence that there is a strong need for an effective national waste campaign alongside incoming policies such as Packaging Extended Producer Responsibility to boost social norms and feelings of perceived worthwhileness of recycling. These campaigns should build on existing insights and resources and bring together work done by existing campaigns such as “NI Recycles”, as well as continuing to communicate the impacts of recycling via My Recycling NI.

Local councils

Local councils can utilise incoming revenue from pEPR to address issues on a local scale and provide clear and direct guidelines to support citizens on what can/cannot be recycled. Local councils should build on the existing insights from the Tracker and the work of “NI Recycles” to identify and successfully target key issues and population groups. Local councils can utilise communications guidance and support from WRAP to design clear, behavioural science led communications to drive increased uptake and accuracy of recycling. 

Producers and businesses

Producers should look to simplify packaging and align with pEPR recommendations. Designing for recycling will reduce the barriers of separating materials for citizens. Producers should align with best practice guidelines for labelling which integrate behavioural nudges into on-pack messages, as well as using clear, direct labels such as OPRL - which were found to correlate with reduced levels of contamination.  

Businesses should look to improve or introduce workplace recycling. Support can be found at Business of Recycling NI

For dedicated support for the Hospitality and Food Sector, businesses can visit the Guardians of Grub website