Recycling bottle tops

[hash tag]

Get the little things right and the big things will follow?
What do people do with the bottle tops from a plastic bottle? Mrs Tag and I have been "discussing" this since reading this article, which says they should be left on the bottle, but I say not.
What do people think?

‘We haven’t been given the money to get it right’: why so much of the UK is rubbish at recycling

Despite our commitment to sustainable living, domestic recycling is getting worse. Who – or what – is to blame?

www.theguardian.com

 

[magneze]

Off

 

[8ball]

Get the little things right and the big things will follow?

Get the little things right and you can stay distracted while the world burns and the rich party on.

 

[Puddy_Tat]

my understanding is they are a different sort of plastic to the bottles, so should be off.

until a year or two back, my local council said not to recycle the lids, you can now recycle any plastic if it's not black, so i put the lids in the recycling bin, but separate to the bottles.

i think that's the right thing to do but not entirely sure...

and isn't a lot of 'recycling' in the UK really 'ship it all off to somewhere else and let them deal with it'?

 

[8ball]

It depends what the recycling people do with the lids.
I leave the lids on because the plastic is then probably of more use to the children combing through it on a Chinese beach.

 

[Dystopiary]

If the lid and bottle are both recyclable, I squash the bottle down then replace the cap, trying not to make the bottle so squashed at the top that the cap won't fit back on.
I always give them a clean first. I don't think they'd take it otherwise.

 

[WouldBe]

I take the top off.

Tops are usually a different colour to the bottle which makes it difficult for sorting machines to sort.

 

[oryx]

What always gets me about issues like this...

Why is the onus always put on the consumer and not the fucking manufacturers?

See also: pump bottles, crispy plastic, sandwich containers which are part cellophane, part cardboard, etc. etc.

 

[cupid_stunt]

I had this conversation recently with someone that thought you could leave the tops on, the rules in West Sussex are that tops should be removed -

Metal lids from wine bottles and jam jars should be removed and placed loose in your recycling bin.

Small [plastic] bottle tops can't be recycled as they are too small to be sorted mechanically, but some local groups and charities collect them.

 

[platinumsage]

If you take the top off, do you also take off the little plastic collar it was attached to, since that is made of the same material?

 

[LDC]

This kind of stuff is exactly what the phrase, "Re-arranging deckchairs on the Titanic" was invented for.

 

[Cid]

If you take the top off, do you also take off the little plastic collar it was attached to, since that is made of the same material?

Yep, exactly. Don’t think I’ve ever met a decapper who does this.

Here our bin collection (veolia) is so shit half the recycling ends up in general waste anyway (to do with them not collecting overfull bins, which they always are because it’s flats and people have waste left over from the last missed collection).

But also yes, this is the most banal distraction from the actual causes of climate crisis.

 

[hash tag]

Yep, exactly. Don’t think I’ve ever met a decapper who does this.

It can be a dangerous business but I usually remove the collars from all bottles before disposing of them, wine, olive oil, sauces etc. And since the dishwasher will get run at some point, some will get a rinse in there first.

 

[Cid]

For me first step is to actually have consistent recycling standards. I mean fuck, it really can't be that hard to design unified standards and specify plant, logistics, collection methods etc. I mean obviously privatised industry etc.

 

[Riklet]

I dont think it matters either way. They use a magnet to remove then from the broken glass. Save your energy for something else.

 

[UnderOpenSky]

Keep them till after there has been a nuclear war and you need currency.

 

[MickiQ]

It depends on what sort of material it's made of tops off things like pop bottles I toss in in the black bin since they're not (as far as I am know) recyclable. Tops off things like shampoo bottles which are normally made of exactly the same material as the bottle body I leave on. Always rinse either first.

 

[oryx]

For me first step is to actually have consistent recycling standards. I mean fuck, it really can't be that hard to design unified standards and specify plant, logistics, collection methods etc. I mean obviously privatised industry etc.

100% this.

The standards change from time to time within local authorities, too.

 

[bcuster]

i leave the plastic caps on the plastic bottles

metal bottle tops from glass bottles; recyclable?

also: does the wasted water involved in rinsing bottles and other recyclables override the benefits of recycling containers, that are mostly not being recycled at all?

 

[stavros]

Lush, the Body Shop-style high street outlet, used to take plastic bottle tops in their shops, for recycling into their packaging. They stopped doing it a few years ago, for reasons unknown.

 

[hash tag]

For me first step is to actually have consistent recycling standards. I mean fuck, it really can't be that hard to design unified standards and specify plant, logistics, collection methods etc. I mean obviously privatised industry etc.

So difficult. House collections are so different to flat collections.
In our flats we have paladin bins for waste and separate ones for recycling. All my recycling goes into the correct bin, loose. Some neighbours put recycling and general waste in the recycling or non recycling bins. Some throw the recycling out in plastics sacks and so on.
I don't believe black plastic can be recycled. Who knew that shredded paper cannot go in recycling.

 

[hash tag]

Confession time. For the hell of it, I wrote to a couple of people on this subject and both replied.

One reply was from Baroness Jones of Moulscoomb. Her reply was "REMOVE!!"
nothing more, nothing less

 

[Cid]

Confession time. For the hell of it, I wrote to a couple of people on this subject and both replied.

One reply was from Baroness Jones of Moulscoomb. Her reply was "REMOVE!!"
nothing more, nothing less

Things is: why? I mean there have been actual campaigns telling people to leave the cap on. On a quick google it's because smaller caps fall through the initial contamination sorting procedure. And this gets at a fundamental problem here - recycling on an individual level is as much dictated by superstition and habit as it is by guidance. In one region you have a green bin that allows plastic bags, in another region it doesn't... Move between those regions and suddenly people don't know what to do with that plastic waste. So a lot of the time they just stick with what they did before.

And we're still exporting vast amounts of waste. Something like 2/3 of it apparently... Not to China, because they told everyone to fuck off with their shitty waste. Malaysia (who are also on the verge of off-fuckery it seems), Poland, Turkey, Indonesia. You have to ask what the point is here. Energy costs in cleaning, in transport... Environmental costs in illegal dumping. At the end you get a fraction of the input back as useable plastic (iirc its uses are fairly limited too, though may be wrong on that). Why not just incinerate at source?

So what it needs really is some level of unified standard. Or at least a set of them that allow consistent guidance at the consumer level. Make sure that high value waste like metals are getting into very high percentages. Try to reduce plastic use at source, though that is obviously quite hard for many products. Maybe even tell people it's fine to put contaminated plastic into general waste (or have an incinerator bin) - surely that's better than it getting dumped somewhere in Indonesia?

 

[cupid_stunt]

I found this interesting, it shows where recycling materials collected across West Sussex, and sorted at the Ford MRF, goes after it's sold.

Almost all plastic ends up being recycled in the UK, a small amount is exported to Europe, none to the rest of the world. Oddly almost all corrugated cardboard ends up in India Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Recycling collected from your home during 2020/21 at Ford Materials Recycling Facility and where it goes.

 

[weltweit]

I keep the caps with the bottles because I compress the bottles and then need the caps on tight to prevent the bottles expanding again.

 

[Cid]

I found this interesting, it shows where recycling materials collected across West Sussex, and sorted at the Ford MRF, goes after it's sold.

Almost all plastic ends up being recycled in the UK, a small amount is exported to Europe, none to the rest of the world. Oddly almost all corrugated cardboard ends up in India Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Recycling collected from your home during 2020/21 at Ford Materials Recycling Facility and where it goes.

I wonder if West Sussex's waste is particularly easily managed... Relatively well funded council maybe? Or maybe that's just a very selective sample - i.e 30% of our plastic waste goes to Ford materials, and almost all of that is recycled here. Something going on there anyway, not a snowball's chance in hell they're recycling 100% of mixed plastic packaging surely?

e2a: yes, I need to read it properly. I assume it means once materials are sorted into this grade of material, this is where it goes.

 

[gentlegreen]

I've always imagined plastics are chopped up and then sorted optically (near-infrared spectrophotometry) - hence the inability for them to accept black plastic.

 

[cupid_stunt]

I wonder if West Sussex's waste is particularly easily managed... Relatively well funded council maybe? Or maybe that's just a very selective sample - i.e 30% of our plastic waste goes to Ford materials, and almost all of that is recycled here. Something going on there anyway, not a snowball's chance in hell they're recycling 100% of mixed plastic packaging surely?

It's all recycling collected, as it goes into a mixed bin, then all of it ends up at Ford for sorting.

 

[Cid]

It's all recycling collected, as it goes into a mixed bin, then all of it ends up at Ford for sorting.

See edit; I think it's just telling you where materials are going once graded and sorted. So there's a facility somewhere in the UK that recycles mixed plastics, and they can send that there, but it gives no indication of what percentage of collected waste is too contaminated to meet that grade.

 

[Cid]

I've always imagined plastics are chopped up and then sorted optically (near-infrared spectrophotometry) - hence the inability for them to accept black plastic.

See again, this is the thing... I've assumed similar I think? but I know a lot of waste is also manually sorted... I think I have a vague idea of some stepped process where it gets scanned and goes through an initial machine sort, then hand picking. But not sure that makes sense. At some point bales are involved? Every council should have a transparency obligation and an explainer for their waste system. Probably some system where you can become a certified volunteer for public communication (even just on a local level like posting leaflets in your building to explain what people should be doing).