This is a question we’ve been curious about for a long time. How clean do items that get recycled really need to be? Is it necessary to rinse out every ounce of yogurt from its bin, clean every spec of tomato sauce out of the jar? If these containers aren’t sparkling, will the recycling plant reject them?
Thankfully, Mother Jones has some answers for us.
According to Recology, the company that runs San Francisco’s recycling program, spokesman Robert Reed says most facilities won’t throw away a container simply because it’s dirty. So don’t sweat it if there’s still a little food left on the items you’re recycling. The thing is, the cleaner they are, the more they’re worth.
Municipal facilities first sort recycling by type (paper, several kinds of plastic, tin, etc.), and then by quality. Workers separate clean recyclables from soiled ones, into bales. “If the bale is lower quality, there is less revenue coming back into the system from the sale of recyclables, which helps pay for the program,” says Reed. The takeaway: By providing clean recyclables, you can actually save your city (and ultimately, taxpayers) money.
So yes, you still need to rinse out containers before recycling them, but they don’t need to be spotless. And if you can get that last bit of yogurt out without having to use too much water, than do it.
Thank you for the useful information. I look forward to it every day.
I once met a woman who worked at a recycling plant. Her tip was you must remove the caps from bottles. The machines compress them and those caps shoot off like bullets. So we joked about the need to “decapitate” the bottles as a mnemonic device.
A plotline for some CSI show? Murder in the recycling factory – with helpful tips along the way for recyclers as the murder is solved.
Also, my favorite deep down recycling organization – http://ifixit.org – if you fix things, you keep them around longer.