Not this one, every one. The only difference is that they bother to put this info on the label.
Nearly all containers (glass or plastic) need to have their label removed to recycle properly. And you must rinse them out, too.
Some can be recycled with the label on, but only if the plastic used is the type that can be recycled. Confusing and frustrating, yes.
The crappy thing is that some labels really don’t come off easily because they’ve been glued in place… those are awful to recycle because it requires quite a bit of extra effort, soaking, adhesive remover, etc… 😂
And you must rinse them out, too.
This step right here has to end. Recycling facilities should have cycling filtered graywater loops to do the rinsing. Using clean drinking water to rinse out containers is an absolute waste.
I work for a plastic recycling plant manufacturer, specifically for the sorting, shredding, cleaning and drying steps of plastic recycling (after that you usually have melting and extrusion before ending up with small plastic pellets that can be used to make other stuff).
I can confirm you, we have “cycling filtered grey water” cleaning. You don’t need to clean up your plastic containers, just empty them. Also various chemicals will be used in the process, when necessary.
We also make de-labelers to remove the labels from plastic bottles, although this kind of label in the picture is extremely hard to remove and, afaik, either requires human labor (aka poor countries with labor conditions you don’t want to think about) or just becomes waste. So yeah, this is some of the worst shit.
I’ve been to a recycling sorting facility (glass, paper, metal and plastic all go in the same bin here). The people working the conveyor belts had to practically wear hazmat suits, as whatever came in was vile. I rinse my containers extra clean since I saw that.
At least in Germany that step is not necessary as far as I know.
It…it probably is.
Not really. We do have to make sure to empty the container as good as possible though.
Man, I was looking into Germany’s waste infrastructure in general, and damn, I’m jealous, lol. I couldn’t find any concrete answers to the degree on which you should rinse plastic, though. That said, I imagine it’s probably in your best interest to at least give a quick rinse to avoid your own bin getting nasty, even if not required.
What I found is the term löffelrein, a wonderful German word meaning something like “as clean as possible when using a spoon” for joghurt for example.
I usually bring my trash down before it get’s nasty. Our “bio trash” is more of a problem, as anything biodegradable gets into it which attracts fruit flys. Rinsing plastics is still just a waste of water (and time).
I agree, but rinsing at home addresses multiple concerns.
I think the issue is that some people throw out containers with their lids on and completely covered in food matter.
a) it makes it difficult/impossible to actually recycle when it finally gets there. b) it attracts wildlife to your recycling bins.
It’s just best practice, really.
it attracts wildlife to your recycling bins
I’d argue this point is nullified given recycling and trash live next to each other for pick-up (at least in the US). If your bins don’t seal to keep scent away, they’ll be targeting the trash cans anyways.
In parts of the world where clean drinking water is at a premium and increasingly more so, (like the western half and soon 2/3 of the US) it definitely matters to conserve the water we need to live whenever possible.
This brings up another good point though, packaging design should be changed to ensure the maximum amount of purchased product can be removed for use as easily as possible. So many containers today are designed to be sold as “this has 20oz in it!” and only 18oz is accessible. They then have tiny necks or convoluted lips or shapes to make reaching into the container with tools to remove the rest of the product difficult. The companies don’t care about the loss of product as the extra 2oz costs them essentially nothing. Even though that added weight is wasting energy being transported at every single stage of the supply chain to be thrown away at the end, they got the sale because it said 20 instead of 18 on the bottle and they could mark up the price accordingly!
tl;dr on the last paragraph: If the container is designed to start its recycling journey as devoid of product as possible, the whole process will have less cleanup and energy/water use, whatever the process is.
I’d argue this point is nullified given recycling and trash live next to each other for pick-up (at least in the US). If your bins don’t seal to keep scent away, they’ll be targeting the trash cans anyways.
I’m Canadian, and in my municipality, we have recycling (cardboard, plastic, glass), compost (food matter), and garbage (pretty much anything that can’t be recycled.
The compost bins are sealed, so pests are never a concern. I don’t have issues with open recycling bins, but did before I learned how to actually recycle stuff. My garbage bags never have issues, since they don’t have food in them.
I can see issues in places that don’t offer such a robust garbage/recycling program.
In parts of the world where clean drinking water is at a premium and increasingly more so, (like the western half and soon 2/3 of the US) it definitely matters to conserve the water we need to live whenever possible.
100% agree. It frustrates me to have to clean something that’s going to be thrown out, but if you’re strategic about it, you can find ways to do this with very minimal impact on water use.
Not to go off track, but I found that since I’ve been cooking my own beans, making my own non-dairy milk, and relying less on packaged good, my recycling bins are nearly empty every week. Reducing or reusing is often much better for everyone than recycling.
A bottle is hard to rinse lid or not.
Wouldn’t you just rough chop the material and then rinse it?
Wouldn’t you just rough chop the material and then rinse it?
I don’t even know if that’s feasible, but if there’s a municipality that already does this, I’d love to know how it’s been going for them.
It wouldn’t prevent the problem of wildlife/pests getting into dirty recycling items, though.
It would be so much easier if drink companies just used standardized containers instead of making their own homemade special designs to try and look fancy.
Orange juice was fine in a 2L cardboard box. We just recently got a jug of Tropicana or some shit and it’s some fancy moulded pitcher shape with a spout and flip up plastic lid. That just makes everything more difficult, especially recycling because it will be a pain to rinse out I bet.
I’d be 100% ok if all containers were mason jars. Most of the time, I can’t even reuse glass jars because of their stupid, non-standard lids!
Cereal should just come in a biodegradable plastic, no box.
But standardize everything. Never mind hassling consumers not to use plastic bags when companies are putting layer upon layer of plastic on their products. If a manufacturer can’t use a standardized package, they shouldn’t be allowed to sell the product without a massive environmental tax added onto their product.
Some can be recycled with the label on, but only if the plastic used is the type that can be recycled
Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t that only true if the plastic uses for the label is in the same category (same recycling symbol) as the bottle?
In my experience, some labels are quite detailed and will say whether you need to separate the label or lid from the container, or not.
But generally speaking, yes, assuming the material class is the same, it should be fine to recycle them together.
Okay. So they do this in Japan. The plastic used in the wrapper is different than the plastic in the bottle. They require different processes to recycle. It’s also far more efficient for regular people to just rip it off and throw one in one bin and the other in another bin in their own homes than it is for a sorting facility to go through mountains of this stuff trying to get it right every single time. Frankly I wish more places did it this way.
I hope this explanation will make things even less infuriating.
Recycling in Japan is a very involved process. You end up with like, 4 different bags of recyclable types, depending. I appreciate it.
Most European countries I’ve visited have at least 3 bins/bags : paper, plastic, everything else. Most cities also separate glass and aluminium. Some townhalls offer bags/containers for bio trash, that’s turned into compost.
Where I live (EU) most single family homes have two bins, one for burnable normal trash and one for food and biological waste.
Recycling especially cardboard and paper, but also plastics is very common but those will have to be brought to either a very local drop off point or a local recycling/waste disposal site.
The drop off points usually have small containers for paper, plastics, metal, glass and small boxes for non rechargable batteries.
The recycling facility accepted pretty much everything that one could ever want to throw away.
Minnesota is like that, too. At least near St. Paul/Minneapolis
Many cities just burn a lot of it. Technically “recycled” according to the definition and generates some energy, but plastic is just not great no matter how you look at it.
Source for some cities burning non-pet plastics in Japan: https://youtu.be/sAu3LVktMwE?si=30PgjrPFFiFFF7Tt&t=55s
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/sAu3LVktMwE?si=30PgjrPFFiFFF7Tt&t=55s
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Truth is, it doesn’t matter anyway, because over 90% of plastic isn’t being recycled.
This whole thing (the removable label to supposedly make the bottle more recyclable) is an exercise in futility and virtue signalling to the “green” demographic for profit, aka greenwashing.Edit to be clear: the answer is to abolish capitalism, which is why all of this is happening in the first place.
Or hear me out, we don’t need to put yet another layer of a different type of plastic wrapping an already perfectly sufficient vessel. The infuriating part to me is how this is manufactured, and it’s such a waste all for the sake of marketing.
So your solution would be to print directly on the bottle or something?
That would certainly be one way of doing it, or at the very least not have it be an entire wrap!
But almond products are so extremely bad for the environment to begin with that I wouldn’t think any company that is morally bankrupt enough to sell almonds would care about such things.
You need to separate most materials in order to recycle them. The plastic of a lid is different from that of a bottle which are both different from a wrapping. Separating materials is key to successful recycling. A lot of times stuff can’t get recyled because people don’t separate it before throwing it away.
Or you could just use, you know, reusable materials.
Separation requirements vary. In the UK, plastic bottle caps are generally tethered to the bottle now to prevent people from separating them.
Why?! I dont get it. What kind of psychopath doesn’t put the cap back on when empty. Who opens a bottle, throws the cap away, and chugs away?! How is this a problem? I’m just so baffled this was/is a problem.
I guess me? don’t spill and it’s not a problem just like a glass
But it’s one of the few benefits of plastic bottles; if I don’t finish it, I can re-seal it. It’s not about spilling, it’s about preserving.
I guess personally if I’m leaving and I’m not done with it I just chug it quick and throw it away
When I squash a (gallon) jug it sometimes warps the opening so that the cap doesn’t fit anymore.
True enough. Didn’t think of it as I’m used to a recycling system where you don’t crush them. In fact, if you did, you wouldn’t get your deposit back.
Uh, I was replying to someone who said it’s essential to separate lids from their bottles. It’s not psychopaths who are doing this — it’s people who think it’s the right thing to do.
Sorry, I missed that. That’s actually really interesting and the only good answer I’ve seen so far; people doing harm thinking they are doing good. Still hate it though… The cap gets in the way of drinking.
Could simply be to keep the material together. Makes sorting easier.
I understand that’s the reason. My point it, I’m surprised and amazing this doesn’t happen automatically already. I’ve never not put the cork back on a bottle when it was empty.
You mean you have to remove the plastic label before you throw the bottle into a recycling bin which gets dumped into a landfill never to be seen again.
Shhhh, if they don’t know they still feel good about it
But, but, but, they’re going to eventually mine all the plastic out of the landfills because at some point will be swimming in so much energy and time that turning it back into the little bit of oil that was used to make it Will be our sacred duty as humans. Tomorrow us will definitely mine all that back out and turn it back into oil right?
And that’s if they’re lucky. There’s also a decent chance it will end up piled up on some foreign beach/riverbank to slowly leach into the ocean.
It all gets dumped in the ocean
nah, we put ours in the hillside. trash hill’s getting chonky
Future archeologists will be confuss
I don’t mind, as long as there are some
No one said anything about human archaeologists 😁
Trash hill got back
Plastic is better off just going in the trash. The ability to recycle it is largely a lie. Especially plastic that touched food as it needs to be clean to recycle.
It could be recycled, it’s just that the world is too cheap to bother with it.
Recycling only works when the price of the material is high enough to justify the reclamation process. It doesn’t work for plastic because of the insane subsidies given to the petroleum industry. If we had a significant enough carbon tax, you’d start seeing more actual plastic recycling.
Recycling has always been a lie to make you feel good about consumption. If it’s not a valuable commodity, it just goes to the dump anyways.
It can be IF its
- clean
- dry
- its the same type of plastic
- its not a bag/foil/film
- all the other materials are clean and dry in the same lot.
Even after all that, it’s really only useful in downcycling.
This is absolute nonsense.
In Germany, between 38-48% of plastic is recycled (source). Sure, that‘s far from all of it, but still far, far better than nothing.
The recycling rate might be lower in other countries, but just giving up and putting everything in the regular trash is probably the worst thing you could do.
Still there is the issue, that recycling plants seem to pollute their surroundings with microplastics by just washing the plastic
Obviously recycling is good, but with plastic it seems we’re not in a place to handle it reasonable in any way…
What kills me is that just a couple morons can contaminate a large batch of recyclables, that could’ve otherwise been perfect. But I guess humanity will always have this sort of problem, until it kills us.
Stop spouting this nonsense please. It might be true for the USA, but other countries have their shot together and in fact do recycle plastic.
Which once removed and put into the recycling, the plastic bottle will then go live a long life in the landfill.
Milk should come in bags, there I said it
CANADIAN
We used to get it in glass bottles, and the bottles would be reused (not melted down).
Just a shame getting it that way costs about 3-4 times as much as a big four pint plastic jug from Tesco.
That’s just dumb. It’s supposed to cost a little more, where the extra money is returned upon returning the bottle.
Oh, hello there fellow Canadian
I’ve heard this a couple times now. Where in Canada are they doing this?
Ontario and Quebec are the two I know have the 4L in bags. I don’t know for the others.
Ontario? I think you mean NewFordland
Are the bags plastic?
Leather
It’s just a live cow.
In the fridge?? Seems like I need a bigger fridge
So, do you just throw the bag in the fridge? How is it stored?
Throw the 4L bag in the fridge. Remove one of the three inner 1.3 L bags, and place it in the dedicated milk bag holder that every household has:
Snip the corner, pour yourself a glass, and enjoy!
How do you close the milk bag? Surely you can’t leave it open wouldn’t that shorten the milks lifespan, right?
Milk and other raw foods generally won’t spoil any faster unwrapped Vs wrapped in a fridge. Wrapping is mostly to stop odour transfer and other physical contaminants. The lid of a milk jug would be functionally similar to wrapping a glass of milk with plastic wrap.
storage method - Uncovered Raw Meat or Milk in Fridge - Seasoned Advice - https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/35900/uncovered-raw-meat-or-milk-in-fridge
From all these comments I have had some serious misconceptions on the fridge life of milk.
I was wondering the same thing. I’m guessing it just gets used fast enough. They are smaller than what most Americans buy.
The bag-jug-holder-thingy that my partner’s dad gave us has a little hook thing where you can pull the snipped end of the bag through. Works fairly well to mostly close the bag, and only lets out a drizzle of milk when you tip it (my kid’s favorite part lol).
We don’t close it. It’s never been a problem.
This is almond juice, not milk.
Or don’t drink milk.
we got a lactose hater here
water too
They should teach AI how to sort garbage and do it for us instead of making it create videos of pirate ships in a cup of coffee
But the pirates can sort the garbage… Right??? Please tell me I am right…
Imagine doing something slightly inconvenient, let alone something that can take a whole second.
I think the point was, you’re removing plastic from plastic to recycle plastic. The plastic you removed won’t be recycled. So…what’s the point? It’s terrible package design.
The plastic you’re removing can’t be recycled. if left on the bottle, some recycling centers (maybe most actually) just throw out the bottle because it’s more cost effective then preparing the bottle for recycling.
Any and all plastic bottles experience this problem (plastic bottle caps are bad too). This is a company making it more likely your bottle will be recycled, by making it easier to remove the non recyclable materials.
Yes.
They don’t recycle even the recyclable part or alternatively the unrecyclable part gets burned off in the process (both bad options).
In a world where ‘more brands = more freedom’ for some reason companies just compete on fancy packaging, and we support by buying them (bcs of lack of alternatives).
We don’t need oil based plastics at all, only if we let the market innovate.
Welcome to Mildly Infuriating.
Yeah, I guess you are right.
The whole system is (intentionally) super infuriating & inconvenient.
2 different kinds of plastic.
Not all plastic is recyclable. John Oliver (nsfw) has a good bit on it here:
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/Fiu9GSOmt8E
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Do people not enjoy ripping the paper off of plastic water bottles? This looks like the same kind of fun to me.
At least yours has a perforated line to try and tear before giving up and just getting a knife. My family keeps buying the bottles with no perforation and isn’t a smooth bottle. Tedious getting them ready for recycling.
I think you are on to something, mr Whistleblower. Keep digging and call Greta when you have drawn conclusions! In the meantime, move stealthily, they may be watching! :-)
