From June 4, 2007 and throughout London Sustainability Weeks, you can ask us anything you ever wanted to know about household recycling - and hopefully we'll find the answer. No more recycling stress! Use the form below and we'll pass your question on to our contact at your local borough. We intend to publish all the questions and answers at the end of the event.
glass?', 'Should tins and glass be washed out?', 'Should junk mail catalogues be removed from their outer polybag?', 'Should polythene windows be removed from window envelopes?', 'Should tape and stickers be removed from cardboard?' Without answers many of us might well be consuming additional energy and wasting precious water preparing our glass bottles, cans, tins, and envelopes. So what should we be doing, what is best practice? How can we best help? Having talked to different people within the UK recycling industry, the main issue is to avoid contaminating your recyclable waste, by either leaving decomposing residue in open containers, or by putting out
non-recyclable items.
So best practice is:
1. Know exactly what materials your local borough accepts.
2. Rinse all containers (ideally in used washing-up water) to reduce the risk of vermin at the reprocessing plant.
Beyond this, recycling policy varies from borough to borough - some stipulating that you separate out your recyclables, others offering to pick up everything in one bag or bin to be separated out later (known as 'co-mingled' collection). Policy is also dictated by each borough's reprocessors
and manufacturers.
Co-mingled collection
Co-mingled recyclable materials collected in a bag or bin have to go to a materials recycling facility (MRF) to get sorted before they are sent on to reprocessors. Greenwich MRF offers the following insight:
On contamination:
The most important thing is to make sure that nothing is contaminated by nappies, food waste, garden waste etc. – anything which has the potential to decompose (it smells and attracts vermin). Food waste starts to decompose, gets gooey and sticks to paper and machinery. So, rinse all containers and find out exactly what products you
can recycle.
Labels and lids:
It doesn’t matter whether you remove labels and lids from containers. The reprocessors, who are sold the sorted material, are not that strict about it because they clean the materials anyway. Inevitably, they will use some water as part of their process, depending on the material to
be cleaned.
Glass:
The Greenwich MRF doesn’t mind receiving crushed glass. It’s not hand-picked and is sold on as an aggregate substitute so it all has to be crushed anyway. The whole sorting process is designed in such a way as to get all the materials out of the system in a saleable form – glass is smashed into pieces so it can fall through something that looks like a sieve.
Containers:
It’s not necessary, but squashing cans, tins and plastic bottles saves considerable space and therefore transportation energy.
Separate collection
Separately collected material is normally sent directly to reprocessors. Different boroughs might have different specifications depending on who they sell the materials to, but in general, this is what the some of the biggest reprocessors require:
Glass:
If at all possible, don’t break the bottles and jars as they might be colour separated manually and broken glass is a a health hazard. Remove lids and caps and recycle separately. They should get removed in the process, but if any slip through it can harm the furnace. Don’t worry about labels as they will either be ‘blown’ out of the glass fragments or burnt in the furnace anyway. Rinse containers so they don’t smell and attract vermin.
If a bottle is returnable it is usually preferable to return it, rather than to recycle it. It saves energy, especially if the content is bottled locally. Light bulbs, 'Pyrex' or 'Visionware' and window glass cannot be recyled yet. If you can, make sure that you group bottles in the correct way – clear, green or brown. Blue glass bottles can go in the green glass bank. Bottles with a coloured coating can be recycled as clear – the coating will burn off in the furnace.
Paper:
A lot of London’s recycled newspapers and magazines are transported to a single Kent-based reprocessor to be made into new newsprint paper. The reprocessor only accepts newspapers and magazines and has set requirements. But if your borough doesn’t specify that they only want newspaper and magazines, you can recycle all your paper materials, including cardboard, as ‘mixed paper’.
The reprocessor has machines that can remove staples and sellotape and stickers, so don’t worry about those. Burnt paper is not recyclable and neither the MRFs nor the reprocessors are keen on wet paper, so try and keep it dry.
Tear out the windows in window envelopes if you want to, but they do go through a process that removes the plastic and the glue. If the paper can be torn, then it can be recycled. Cartons, such as ‘tetra’ packs, cannot be recycled yet because of the coating material. Flatten cardboard boxes, so they take up less space. Like paper, don’t worry about removing sellotape and stickers.
Plastic:
Contamination is the biggest problem when recycling plastic. To avoid contamination, avoid non-household plastic bottles, such as those that have contained hazardous substances like engine oil or paint. Other container types, like yogurt, ice cream, flower pots and sandwich containers can be given a quick rinse. Avoid plastic films and check with your borough if they accept carrier bags. Don’t contaminate with foreign objects such as cans, cardboard, paper, textiles or glass.
Steel/aluminium:
Corus (a metal reprocessor and manufacturer) urges recyclers to try and recycle all metal, because all metals are recyclable. Again, the most important thing here is to rinse the containers. Labels don’t have to be removed as they will burn off in the process (the metal gets remelted at 1700 degrees C). Crisp and chocolate packaging cannot be recycled – it may look like some sort of metal, but it’s actually plastic. Steel and aluminium are the most commonly recycled materials. Steel can be identified with a magnet and you can check whether something is aluminium by using the scrunch test (if the material stays scrunched it’s aluminium).
'Bring banks'
People who live in high-rise flats or above shops may not get their recycling collected by kerb-side collection schemes. In these cases there are often recycling banks in communal waste areas, where residents can deposit their recyclable materials. As residents are asked to separate the materials at the bank, these materials often go directly to reprocessors. Squash plastic bottles, cans, tins and cardboard so they take up less space. As before, rinse out containers so they don’t smell and contaminate other materials. Keep all paper types dry.
What do you make of this article? What about the grease residue in plastic?
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Tracy
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