How can I recycle plastic (other than plastic bottles) and paper (other than newspapers and magazines)?

Question

I have been saving all of my clean plastic household waste so that I could recycle it. I also saved all of the wrapping paper and other paper items from Christmas so that I could recycle them. Today I went to the recycling centre and was told to put the paper into the 'Burnable' facility, and the plastic into the 'Non Burnable' facility. There were facilities for plastic bottles, newspapers and magazines and cardboard, which is great, but nothing for other plastic household waste or paper. How can I recycle these?

Answer 1

YOUR local refuse centre or large supermarket has recycling bins that should take the waste that you want to get rid of.

Answer 2

Concerning paper, you can shred it and suspend it in water.  Take some paper, weigh it, soak it in water with washing up liquid for a day or so to pulp it and remove the ink, then drain it and rinse it through using a sieve and water.  Hold on to the water and boil it almost dry in order to prevent the ink re-entering the water cycle.  Then, add more water to the paper and put it through a liquidiser.  Weigh the paper again and add water until you have twenty times the original weight of paper in water added to it.  You could probably use grey water for this.  Take a frame of wood and stretch a piece of nylon across it, such as an old pair of tights or a net curtain, attaching it to the frame with staples, drawing pins or something similar.  Stir the pulp thoroughly, then quickly insert the frame obliquely near the surface of the water, shake it in two directions at right angles, then lift it out vertically and let it drain thoroughly with the netting downwards.  After that, turn it upside down on top of a towel and bang it so the pulp falls onto the towel.  Place another towel on top and repeat the process until there is not enough pulp left.  Strain the water and reuse it to flush the toilet.  Leave the sheets of paper you have made to dry for several days, then carefully peel them apart.  Paper can only be recycled six times.  After that, the fibres are too short to hold together, but can be used in composting.  Alternatively, you could compress the pulp into flammable bricks, but it's only really feasible to use these as kindling rather than a main source of fuel.

Concerning plastics, everything made of plastic has a recycling mark with a number inside it indicating the type of plastic.  This is called the resin identification code.  In the case of moulded plastic items, the shape of the lump left on the surface by the mould can be used to identify it.  I would personally only feel happy recycling high and low density polythene, which are numbered 2 and 4.  Plastics are of two main types, thermosetting resins which give off poisonous fumes when heated and thermoplastics, which melt and can be remoulded.

Polythene softens at around 110 Centigrade.  Therefore, if you heat an oven to 120 Centigrade and place a non-inflammable container with polythene packed inside it, this will melt together after about half an hour.  If you then take it out and leave it to cool, you should end up with a solid lump of polythene.  You could mould this at a higher temperature, or just throw the lump away as it would save space in a landfill.

You could use the same process with polypropylene, whose identification code is 5 and melts at around 165, so heating it to 180 would probably do it.  Polyethylene terephthalate, code  1, melts at 260 and can be extruded to make fibres, though it would be difficult to do this at home.  I would leave PVC, code 3, alone, as it doesn't seem safe to me at all, and i think polystyrene (6) contains ozone-depleting gas in its bubbles, though i might be wrong.  Resin identification code 7 is miscellaneous and you should avoid doing anything to these.  Remember also that there are dyes and other chemicals in the plastics which may mean they are unsafe to heat.  I personally would stick to white or transparent HDPE and LDPE and leave the rest alone.

Answer 3

Some supermarkets have recycling banks which can offer greater choice, but each local authority area varies on what is recyclable. Here in E. Dorset, they won't collect cardboard which is a real pain. It has to get taken to the county council's waste facility 2 mls away when I take green rubbish which I cannot home compost. Plastic is also difficult to dispose of. Basically, polymers 1, 2 and 3 (see base of bottle for number) - hard plastics can usually be recycled. Soft and mixed polymer containers and aerosols cannot. Any used paper has to have all selotape or similar removed. Hope that helps.

Answer 4

Many supermarkets such as Sainsburys and Waitrose provide boxes where you can place plastic carrier bags for

recycling and don't forget these can be re-used too. Waitrose and possinly other supermarkets (Ask), operate a bag for life scheme; they sell you very thick re-useable plastic carrier bags for £1 each which they subsequently replace free when the finally split; mine last one year on average.

Answer 5

Paper - check out your local animal sanctuary, sometimes they are grateful for shredded paper for bedding.

Answer 6

Sorry, I don't have an answer other than reuse what you can and try not to buy things that include these non-recyclable materials.

Answer 7

COMPOST, Compost, compost.

Newspapers- If you have shrubs or any type of bedding plants, layers of newspaper and some others are wonderful weed barriers, and they break down in the soil, (unlike alot of the fabric or plastic barriers). Also, shred and use as packing material for packages or gifts. Or you can also decopage (hopefully, spelled correctly). Unfortuantely, even with society trying to go "GREEN", there aren't enough resources backing it to ensure the Recycling facilities are up to date on equipment to do so.

I hope this has been somewhat helpful.