Serious question. Recycling

F

Facefuzz

Well-known member
How come my bin is contaminated if I leave abit of ketchup in the bottle when I recycle?
Surely the first stage is some kind of cleaning?
Crazy
 
Think it comes down to the amount of processing they need to do for each batch. Most ketchup bottles have lids for example, so adding a process where someone has to unscrew lids prior to washing can make it uneconomical - it depends on the recycling plant as they don't all work in the same consistent way

We rinse stuff out cos it takes seconds and prevents stuff from going minging in the heat while it's in recycling
 
I don’t get that they want you to wash tins and bottles out before recycling, surely we are wasting another resource.

At the entrance of the E.Leclerc I use is a machine that crushes plastic bottles. It gives the user 20c for every plastic bottle fed into it. It is really well used and always a queue at it.

When I was at the school, discarded plastic bottles on the school site was a huge issue. I am sure this would solve the problem.

I’m sure there are many of us on here who use to take the pop and beer bottles back to the shop.
 
Norman_Conquest said:
I don’t get that they want you to wash tins and bottles out before recycling, surely we are wasting another resource.

At the entrance of the E.Leclerc I use is a machine that crushes plastic bottles. It gives the user 20c for every plastic bottle fed into it. It is really well used and always a queue at it.

When I was at the school, discarded plastic bottles on the school site was a huge issue. I am sure this would solve the problem.

I’m sure there are many of us on here who use to take the pop and beer bottles back to the shop.
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Surely you wash out tins of sweetcorn etc before you put them in the recycling otherwise you will attract ants and other bugs as well as unpleasant smells. It takes seconds dont see what the issue with rinsing is.
 
Glover_elbow said:
Surely you wash out tins of sweetcorn etc before you put them in the recycling otherwise you will attract ants and other bugs as well as unpleasant smells. It takes seconds dont see what the issue with rinsing is.
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Yeah, recycling is every 2 weeks. I suppose in boro may be different as they have specific bins but even then they must be ripe in summer if stuff is just chucked in
 
Glover_elbow said:
Surely you wash out tins of sweetcorn etc before you put them in the recycling otherwise you will attract ants and other bugs as well as unpleasant smells. It takes seconds dont see what the issue with rinsing is.
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Yes, of course you rinse all the the tins and bottles out but you are still using a vital resource to do this.
 
I’m talking about sauce bottles and the tins you get ready meals in. Some stuff is easy to rinse some stuff needs an actual wash
 
I do my very best by washing objects and putting things into the correct bins, but I am very suspicious when on TV I see lots of rubbish with English labels ending up on some foreign field or beach.
 
I rinse anything particularly dirty but I'm not making them spotless. Water isn't just a closed loop system. It takes a lot of resources and energy to clean it up and get it to your tap. Even more so if you use hot water or you specifically run the tap to wash out just recycling. It doesn't make sense to waste one resource to recycle another. If the council washes all the recycling then if you are washing it first then double the resources are being used. If they don't then you should do it. I think it makes most sense for the washing to be done in bulk. If everyone is individually washing each item that will use far more resources than the council giving everything one big bath.

I'm pretty sure the answer isn't universal though because different councils have different processes so probably best checking to see what the council recommends.

I do get the impression that most recycling doesn't happen the way we expect it to and really the majority of it ends up in landfill anyway and sometimes that somewhere is abroad which must be a further waste of resources.
 
They don’t even take glass for recycling up here 🤷‍♂️

Worth bearing in mind that many are on water meters too, so rinsing everything is an added cost.
 
At our local Tesco there are different recycling bins for different materials. The bin wagon comes along and then empties all the bins into it
 
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