By Alyson Lundstrom
(Originally Published for ZeroMe)
Human recycling activities date back to 1031 when paper was first recycled in Japan. We are firm believers that if a Japanese emperor can make it to the recycling bin, so can you.
As a society, recycling is the ultimate litmus test of our willingness to make a meaningful environmental contribution. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, 1 in 3 Americans regularly, but unfortunately many of those do so incorrectly, and that is what we are here to talk about today- recycling top ten biggest offenders.
A lack of knowledge on the consumer's part as well as a lack of accurate instructions from producers result in countless wasted hours of municipal sorting. In addition, materials that don't escape the sorting can result in damaged industrial machinery and contaminated batches of recyclable materials.
To Wishcycle Is To Make The Problem Worse
The willingness to use the recycling bin does not always equate to getting more materials to processing centers. Instead, American's routinely “wishcycle” by putting items in the recycling bin that they know cannot be recycled with the hope they will be reincarnated to live another life anyway.
The act of “wishcyclng,” as Mother Jones succinctly puts it, not only adds needless amounts of waste that must be sorted out of the recycling system but also poses a contamination threat to actual recyclables if they do sneak through.
The bottom line is: the less sorting people do at the recycling bins, the lower the recycling rate actually is. Because Materials Recovery Facilities (MRF) are faced with the difficult challenge of maintaining a circular system, we need to do our part to remove non-usable waste from the process.
Here are the top 10 components that prevent packaging from being recycled properly:
Size and Shape
Product Leave Behind
Film
Mixed Material
Frosted Glass
Pumps
Foil
Wax Coatings
Dyes
Composite Materials
A grounded knowledge of how we sabotage the potential of recyclable materials can be helpful to both producers and consumers alike. Below we break down the top ten elements that make the end life of a product a dead end for recycling potential.
10 Elements That Prevent Packaging From Being Recycled
Size and Shape
In recycling: size matters. A good rule is that the recycled item should be at least 2 inches squared. Smaller pieces of plastic, paper, and other materials create mechanical issues for recycling equipment and can contaminate other recyclables.
Miniscule recyclables can also be challenging to sort into their resin type, which is a critical step in sorting. Items like caps, lids, and shredded paper should be left out of the recycling bin for these reasons.
Product Leave Behind
Product leave behind is a term used to describe the residues left after the use of a product. This problem is most commonly seen in cosmetics, food packing, and other liquid-based products.
This residual product left behind in hard to empty tubes or the leftovers from food takeaway packaging can have damaging effects on both the recycling machinery and the recyclables they are mixed with.
To properly recycle these items, they need to be properly rinsed out. This is difficult if they have come into contact with an oily component (pizza!), making them persona non-grata at the recycling station.
Film
Films come in two primary forms; as food wrapping or as barrier mechanism in packaging. The former keep our fruits and vegetables fresh and somewhat protected, and the latter is a necessary addition to any packaging that requires a buffer from oxygen, moisture, or leakage.
Although there are recyclable films, they face opposition in mainstream recycling streams when not separated correctly. The last decade has seen the recycling industry shift to single stream recycling services that don’t have the means to process films that can jam up their machinery.
However, the single source polyethylene is in theory, highly recyclable and the producers of these films don’t want to see it going to landfills. There are many “take-back” programs coming online to specifically recycle these items in the future with an end goal of creating a recycling stream just for them. Companies like Trex have set the pace in making a way to see PE-based films efficiently recycled and currently use over 800 million pounds of recycled films as feedstock for its composite lumber products.
Mixed Materials
Mixed materials are the imposter that haunts every single recycling collection that has ever graced the curb. A seemingly innocent paper coffee cup? Lined with a PE film. The milk carton that feels like paper? Lined with a non-recyclable wax.
Mixed materials are those that include two or more components in their structure. This could be a water bottle where the base is made using one type of plastic resin, and the cap is another. The materials need to be sorted in processing to avoid contamination with other plastic types.
Where a water bottle is easy to disassemble, some products are not. Office supplies such as the padded envelope involve both paper and plastic components that cannot be easily separated and should not be recycled as doing so involves a costly human intervention to sort and remove them. Other examples of mixed materials that should not be recycled are: paper coffee cups (inner wax lining), toothpaste tubes (plastic and metal), and milk cartons (paper with wax lining).
Any material that can’t easily be taken apart into its base components and whose individual size also meets recycling regulations won’t reincarnate into a future product. Not only is it unrecyclable, like any item on this list, but if it does sneak through the sorting process, but it can also contaminate entire batches of materials, causing further waste.
Frosted Glass
Glass in its purest form is 100% recyclable. Made from limestone, sand, and soda ash it can see infinite circularity. However, an exception is frosted glass, or “obscured” glass. While it gives a great aesthetic effect, its creation is the result of chemical treatment, making it a contamination threat to clean glass recyclables.
Pumps
Liquid dispensing pumps are a functional dream for quick dispensing but a nightmare for waste streams. If you are a packaging designer tasked with sustainability, they are a recycling disaster often made of many different components and materials.
A typical pump might contain a PP recyclable plastic outer, but a different plastic mechanism on the inside, along with a rubber gasket and, finally, a metal spring that does the heavy lifting (or in this case, squirting). For this reason, if a pump is involved, most recycling instructions will instruct you to discard the pump and recycle the bottle.
A few companies have tasked themselves with these hard to recycle materials. TerraCycle is a pioneer in shredding these pumps and sorting their individual materials into the correct recycling streams.
Better yet, look for a pump made of a mono-material and use it endlessly to reduce its impact.
Wax Coatings
The iconic waxed food carton has been around since 1896, when it was used to package crackers. In modern times it has become a prolific packaging option to hold everything from milk to potato spuds.
Unfortunately, even though the paper beneath might be benevolent, anything with a wax coating cannot be recycled. The wax fibers are often plastic-based polyethylene which has a sticky and glue-like texture. The sticky nature of the material can gum up machines meant to process paper and cardboard.
Paper Components
Paper as a material is highly recyclable. Newspaper, corrugated cardboard, and books are all recyclable. However, some components will take a paper product out of a bid for reincarnation. Additions such as adhesive, plastic windows, inner bubble wrap, bright dyes, and thermal additives mean these items must go into the bin. These inclusions make a paper item a “mixed material” with elements that cannot be separated.
Composite Materials
Composite materials are those that merge two or more materials on a foundational level to create various applications in construction. For example, when we have mixed materials like a water bottle and its cap, we can separate and sort the two types of resin. However, composite materials are far harder to separate.
Composite wood like those found in furniture, cupboards, and tabletop surfaces are made up of chipped wood, plastic, and glass, making them an unsustainable material with limited circularity.
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