Household Items that you Should NEVER Recycle
Given our current technology we’re not able to recycle everything, unbelievably. Despite good intentions, there are some things that just can’t be saved, and may even do more harm by going through the recycling process. Everyday technology is advancing, but you’ll still find that certain items will have to be thrown out, and into a landfill. This article contains a broken down list of some of the most common non-recyclable offenders, and whether or not they can head to the compost, or should simply get tossed in the trash
Are Bottle Caps Recyclable?
This may come off as a shock, but those caps that come with your bottles of soda or juice aren’t recyclable, and the reason may surprise you. Yes, most of the materials in a bottle cap are recyclable by themselves, but notice how every cap, metal or otherwise, has a thin plastic coating on the inside. If you were to melt those down, you would contaminate the entirety of the batch. Before you can melt anything down, you should remember that all the materials have to be separated. If you didn’t, then the material you retrieve from the process can’t be used. It’ll either be too weak, too brittle, or too malleable. This idea will continue to present itself throughout the article, so keep it in mind as you continue reading.
Are Cosmetics Recyclable?
While it is true that there are numerous companies making the change over to non-toxic materials in their beauty products, the fact remains that the vast majority of the market still uses very toxic material in cosmetics. Lipstick, foundations, hair products, even perfumes are all considered to generally be hazardous materials, and therefore unfit to be recycled. These products can be unsafe for the environment, as well as spread illness within a community, due to the carcinogens and hormone disrupting ingredients.
If you need to get rid of unwanted beauty products then you’ll want to contact your local disposal service and provide them with as many details as possible about the product you’re trying to dispose of. More information allows them to properly dispose of the product. It’s more helpful to give them too much information than not enough. For example, many perfumes don’t list their ingredients on bottles, so it may need to be disposed of in an entirely different manner.
This doesn’t mean that all parts of these items are non-recyclable. Despite the toxic materials found inside, glass or plastic containers are still able to be recycled. So long as the contents are completely emptied into the trash first, you can wash these containers so they’re recycle safe, if you’d like. The goal here is to avoid pouring the toxic contents down the train, so avoid using your sink unless you need to. Often simply using an old rag or paper towel will allow you to clean these bottles well enough to be recycled.
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Taking Care of Take-Out Containers
What makes up a pizza box? Cardboard. Chinese pack boxes? Also cardboard. What do these products have in common? Contaminants. Remember in the section about bottle caps when we discussed mixing different materials in the recycling process? Food waste is not an exception to that. Even if you were able to scrape off all of the cheeses, meat scraps and renegade noodles, you’re still left with a box of greases and fatty acids that have soaked into the cardboard. If you try to recycle that you’ll only be adding to the landfill because you’ll be contaminating all of that material. Currently there is no effective way to recycle any paperboard type product that has come in contact with food. It is worth mentioning that many paperboard food products these days are compostable, meaning that you can safely discard them into a compost or even a trash can with less impact on the environment overall.
How Do You Recycle Styrofoam?
One particular hot topic is over Expanded Polystyrene (EPS), which is more commonly known as styrofoam. There is a large following of people who believe that because it’s a synthetic material that breaks easily down, that it is inherently alright to be recycled just as you would with your plastics and papers. It is also widely accepted that you can simply burn EPS.
The truth of the matter is that, yes, styrofoam can be recycled, but only under certain conditions. Throwing Styrofoam into the recycling bin will result in your load simply being thrown out, as the recycling companies can’t melt it down with other materials and they simply don’t have the time, fund and resources to pick through everyone’s bins to separate them correctly. To make matters more complicated, only certain types of styrofoam can be recycled, the rest have to be thrown away. Only the PS 6 styrofoam is able to be recycled, and it will be marked on the backs of all the pieces of styrofoam. No PS 6 symbol on the back means it can’t be recycled.
Burning styrofoam at home is dangerous. Burning polystyrene will result in the release of deadly black carbon and carbon monoxide into the atmosphere. Along with being harmful to the environment, you and anyone near you will be at risk for carbon monoxide poisoning when you burn styrofoam. Because of carbon monoxide poisoning close to 500 people a year die, and another 30,000 are put into the hospital. Needless to say, it’s just better to let the professionals handle it.
Despite this, there are some alternate ways to “recycle” styrofoam. For instance, companies like Publix in the southern states of America allow you to donate Styrofoam to them, allowing them to re-use them for products currently being packed at their warehouses. There are other companies throughout the nation that have similar programs as well, so be sure to hop onto the internet and see which businesses are willing to take your styrofoam. If there are no businesses in your area with a similar program, you can always contact your local recycling plant for a hassle-free drop off, where they will then take care of it’s disposal.
Is There a Problem with Recycling Shredded Paper?
As strange as it sounds, there’s a good reason for shredded paper to be another hot topic in the world of recycling. This is a rare instance where it’s not so much about it’s impact on the environment as it is about the logistics of recycling shredded paper. On average, one american uses about seven trees per year for paper, and out of all of the recycled paper, we only get back about 66% of it for re-use. It’s harder to recycle shredded paper than regular paper so many companies will refuse to take it, and even the ones that do will force you to separate them into their own clear bags.
So in short, the best thing you can do with paper is to not shred it in general. This of course is unreasonable, since most paper that is shredded contains sensitive information that you don’t want the general public to get a hold of. Since it can’t be helped, you should only shred documents that contain sensitive information, like your credit card numbers, checking account numbers, and anything related to your social security number. Doing this will minimize the amount of shredded paper that’s created, and recycling plants can get the most out of the process.
Are Milk and Juice Cartons Recyclable?
It’s often thought that juice boxes and milk cartons are able to be recycled. Based on the texture one might think they’re a type of cardboard of paper-based material. In truth, they are. You’ll find that they are made of about 85% paperboard. The big problem is that both juice boxes and milk cartons contain a thin lining of plastic on the inside, which is also known as Low Density Polyethylene (LDPE #4). It prevents the contents of the container from dissolving the walls of it. You’ll need to remember that you can’t mix materials when recycling, so if you throw a bunch of empty juice boxes into your recycling then it may all be thrown away, destroying your hard work.
Many companies these days have addressed this problem by switching their products to purely plastic materials. A simple solution is to simply by only plastic bottles of milk and juice. The greatest thing you can do while recycling is to cut out the middleman as much as possible, so if you can cut your usage of these boxes and cartons altogether, then the less impact you will have overall, despite using more plastic bottles potentially. Don’t forget, if we want to keep things from ending up in the landfill then we have to keep materials separate so they can be reused later on.
Diapers and Recycling
People want to keep landfills from being overwhelmed too quickly, so they often wonder if there is a way to recycle diapers, which can take up to 500 years to decompose when inside a landfill. Again, you have to think about the logistics of it. Both plastic and paper can be found in diapers. On top of that, the diapers would have to be sorted and have contaminants removed to ensure other materials aren’t contaminated by them. In all honestly, it simply isn’t possible to safely recycle a diaper.
There are other ways to dispose of diapers, however! Thanks to the massive market for these items, eco-friendly diapers are currently widely available. They’re made to decompose at a faster rate, so their time in the landfill is minimized greatly.
How Do You Recycle Ceramics?
Ceramics are usually made from clay and heated in order to take form. The process, known as sinter, is where the materials are partly melted together, and they then cool and solidify to retain their shape. It can be said that it’s a similar process to glass. The thing is, being similar and being the same are two different things. You are unable to recycle ceramic. It’s not a material that is easily salvageable, so when your plates and mugs break, your only real option for disposal is trash. You should note that, depending on the amount of clay in the product, you may still be able to compost them.
You can try personally reusing your old pieces of ceramic instead of sending them to the landfill, given that you can’t recycle them. You might be able to make a small plant pot from a mug that’s lost it’s handle by sanding down where the handle broke off from. Art pieces, like mosaics, can also be created by using broken ceramic. You might even be able to file down the ceramic and use it for gravel.
Can You Recycle Plastic Bags?
Plastic bags are a big problem. After plastic bottles, plastic bags account for a major portion of waste in landfills, national parks, and our oceans. Sadly, these also are unable to be recycled. Most recycling plants won’t be willing to take in these bags because of the potential hazard they pose to their equipment, including possibly getting stuck in the gears of trust and other machinery. For this, there’s a simple solution: Don’t use plastic bags. With no way of effectively recycling them, there’s simply no other way to cut down on them in the environment other than just getting rid of them altogether. The only reason to continue using these bags is luxury, since both paper and reusable bags are popular and readily available options. To reduce your carbon footprint, help the environment, and cut down on overall production costs for businesses, one of the easiest solutions is for you to buy several reusable bags, store them in your car, and have them at the ready whenever you next go shopping.
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